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Our Keiki Marketplace is Coming Back this December!

This December we’re hosting our second annual Keiki Marketplace and pau hana potluck event. The event will be Thursday, December 13 from 5:30-7:30pm. We hosted another event of this sort earlier in the year and it was hugely successful, with dozens of kids running their own businesses from their own pop-up shops, selling everything from home goods to homemade foods.

For this event, we’re encouraging the student-preneurs to take the next step and prepare a business plan so that they can most effectively plan for their shops. The planning will help the students create a plan for cost and profits, which allows them to compete to win prizes for the highest grossing student!

If you have an enterprising keiki that wants to start a business, please sign them up here using our Google form. We’ll be offering a business planning session ahead of the event, with more details coming soon. Meeta Vu, one of the co-founders of Impact Hub HNL and mama to one of our student-preneurs, says, “Keiki Marketplace is a wonderful, low-stress way to tap into our children’s entrepreneurial skills. The kids learn so much from the process of brainstorming, developing their product ideas, purchasing materials, production, and marketing.The great thing is that it’s a modern day version of a lemonade stand, so it’s low pressure and a lot of fun. This will be our son’s second year doing the keiki marketplace and he can’t wait to fatten up his wallet again.”

Avinash Vu, selling his wares.

On the same date, we will be hosting a free holiday pau hana and potluck. Please bring a potluck item to share with the community. Impact Hub HNL will provide some food and beverage items as well. ALL are welcome so please invite friends, family, and neighbors.

We are looking forward to seeing you and your creative kids at this event! For more information about the planning stages of the event, please see details here in the Facebook event invite, and be sure to share with friends, family, and loved ones as this event is open to the general public. We hope you can join us for this family-friendly evening!

We look forward to seeing you at Keiki Marketplace!

The 2018 PMI Professional Development Day

Impact Hub HNL was happy to sponsor PMI Honolulu’s 2018 Professional Development Day. The event, which took place October 19, 2018 brought together hundreds of professionals from across Hawaii The Project Management Institute® Honolulu Chapter.

This Professional Development Day was the 20th Anniversary of the event, and based on attendee feedback, the overall theme was decided to be A’ohe Hana Nui Ke Alu’ia : No Task Is Too Big When Done Together.

Professional Development day

At the event, attendees followed three tracks to help them in their own professional development process:

1) Career Pathways: Whether you are new to project management or an experienced PMO manager, this track will consider the career paths and options for advancement that are available to project managers, both inside and outside of the project management field. Come to be a part of the discussion about career planning and mentoring, and hear from local leaders that can share experiences about their own career paths and outcomes.

2) Practitioner Stories: This will be great case studies where people can tie back the lessons to their work. Stories from all industries – construction, tourism, military, IT, healthcare, etc. The tie back to the overall theme is don’t recreate the wheel, let’s learn together.

3) Creative Approaches: Creative approaches to solve problems of today – This is all about tried and true techniques, new emerging techniques, transformation of techniques and a mash-up of techniques and how to do them in the Real World! It’s not about silver bullets. It’s contextual, it’s real. As professionals we need more ways to solve problems and uncover opportunities in our dynamic, demanding and ever-changing environments. How do you work WITH your stakeholders to move projects to successful completion? How do you co-create? How do you build relationships and ohanas with your teams – while accomplishing amazing goals?

Impact Hub HNL member Dean Ramos was a presenter and attendee at the event. Dean, a business consultant, says that, “PMI offers an excellent toolbox for anyone doing project management, and that the event is a full day learning about the tools in the project manager’s toolbox and how to utilize them better.” He says he especially appreciated the Keynote with Kumu Ramsay Taum, who encouraged us to think about working together, better, in any sort of business, which is important here in the islands and even with the mainland visitors that attended the event.

Dean added that while the event is usually targeted to project managers, this year the scope was such that everyone can really benefit from these lessons.

You can download the brochure here to learn more about this event and contact them here to be involved for next year.

What is PMI?

PMI (Professional Management Institute) is the world’s leading not-for-profit membership association for the project management profession, with more than half a million members and credential holders in 185 countries. Their mission is to promote the project management practice and profession through networking, sharing of project experiences, training, education, and certification in the State of Hawaii.

Meet Our New Head Host, Josh Rivera

Impact Hub HNL is delighted to announce that we’ve hired Josh Rivera into a full-time Head Host position. Josh started the first week of November, and he will be working daily to support both our members and our community, helping member engagement, event planning and coordination, and managing our volunteer host team.

Josh was born here on Oahu, but grew up in Florida. He graduated with a Marketing degree from the University of South Florida, and then spent four years in the Army, which brought him back to Oahu.

While in the Army, he worked as a Mobile Gun System Platoon Leader and Signal Corp Platoon Leader at Schofield Barracks. After his service, he went back to the marketing world and started working as a Marketing Assistant for Yelp Hawaii and Barista at Morning Brew (an excellent Kakaako neighborhood coffee shop). He still manages Yelp Hawaii’s social media channels, digital marketing efforts, and helps with their events, which is how he met our Community Director Anne and got to know more about Impact Hub HNL.

Josh is a foodie, a dog dad, and a solo traveller. He says that he loves solo traveling, and encourages everyone to take at least one solo trip in their life. “I enjoy the serendipitous encounters you have with locals and fellow travelers while trekking alone. I believe food and travel go hand in hand. Food is a great way to experience another culture especially when in a new city or country.” When here on the island, he loves to take his Shiba Inu, Kintsugi, out for hikes and for beach adventures.

Please stop by to meet Josh next time to welcome him to the Impact Hub HNL community!

Member Spotlight: Curt Wilken and Karl Smith of CityWide Home Loans

This month’s Member Spotlight is the two owners of CityWide Homeloans, Karl Smith and Curtis Wilken. CityWide is a residential mortgage bank.  In their Hawaii office Karl and Curt focus heavily on construction loans and VA (veteran’s loans) – both of which there is a large need for here in the islands.

Their successful business relationship was actually forged many years ago – the two met with they were kids growing up in Ogden, Utah. They have been friends since 7th grade and remained friends through their college years at Weber State, also in Utah.  It wasn’t until Curt retired from the AirForce, last year, that he was finally able to convince his friend Karl to come visit, and their company grew from there.

CityWide is already one of the largest lenders in the Western states. Regarding their loan services in Hawaii, Karl notes that Hawaii banks tend to be a little more conservative with their lending criteria, and CityWide was able to step in and offer loans for a wide range of projects.  They offer homeowners the opportunity to rebuild old homes, expand their home’s footprint, or do refurbishments and improvements.

The CityWide team was one of our very first members here at Impact Hub, and their time here has proven successful  – they’ve expanded their business and added three new members to their team. When Impact Hub HNL was featured on Hawaii Public Radio recently, Karl was quoted as saying, “We can grow within the space and it’s just a really neat atmosphere.”

If you want to learn more about lending and construction loans, you can listen to Karl and Curt on the Fix it Friday show from 8am-9am weekly with Mike Buck on AM 690. They are also hosting an upcoming Lunch & Learn at Impact Hub HNL, 7 Nov at noon, with Amber Lethem about improving your sales growth. You can register for this FREE event by emailing Curt directly.

Built in Hawaii: Creative Entrepreneurs Share their Business Stories

Built is Hawaii is back! We hosted another successful Built in Hawaii event October 18 featuring two unique entrepreneurial voices from Oahu.

Our Built in Hawaii events are unique storytelling events based on the podcast,”How I Built This” and coordinated in partnership with Hawaii Public Radio’s Generation Listen. This interactive event features local success stories. Whether you are interested in entrepreneurship or not, these stories inspire, motivate, amplify and celebrate community strength.

This event was built from conversations around the idea that Hawaii is uniquely positioned geographically and culturally to incubate ideas in a way that could only happen here. What are those stories? What can we learn from them? What can we replicate to motivate new leaders?

At this event, José A. Fajardo, President and General Manager ofHawaii Public Radio spoke with two creative entrepreneurs, Robert Stehlik from Blue Planet Surf and Katherine Tuider from Honolulu Biennial. Robert shared the story of building a small clothing brand, which year after year grew from a few t-shirts into a thriving small business, moving into retail stores, then board sales, and then Stand-up paddle board design. You can learn more about Blue Planet Surf here.

After years of working in international business, art, and development, Katherine Tuider came back to Hawaii to co-found the Honolulu Biennial, an arts organization that seeks to share the work of Hawaii’s artists with the world and boost our local art scene. She discussed the challenges of getting a creative organization funded on Oahu, and the joy of seeing how enthusiastic the Honolulu community can be about art in public and private spaces. Honolulu Biennial 2019 is happening March 8 – May 5, 2019.

Watch this awesome video recap from Reel World Films!

Meet Numi Tea – A Delicious New Addition to Our Kitchen

Impact Hub HNL membership has lots of benefits: good community, cool events, great networking… and an unlimited supply of organic coffee and tea! You may have seen that our tea collection expanded a few weeks ago, thanks the good folks at Numi Tea.

Numi Tea is a longtime partner of the global Impact Hub community, and we are very excited to share their great teas with our members here in Honolulu. Numi is a cool company producing an array of delicious teas for all palates: we like both their teas and their mission.

We’ve expanded our collection of teas to include many more decaf and caffeine-free options, including Moroccan Mint, Chamomile Lemon, Ginger Lemon, Rooibos, and Dry Desert Lime. We’ve also got more variety for black teas (including a bold Earl Grey and an earthy Pu-erh Tea), and more green tea options (including Gunpowder Green, Toasted Rice, and the popular Jasmine Green). These teas are all free for members to sip and savor while you’re working here at Impact Hub HNL, so try them all!

Why do we like Numi? Numi is a small company based in Oakland, California, that’s committed to making delicious, natural teas and creating a big impact in tea communities around the world.

They use only whole ingredients in their teas (no flavorings, natural or artificial) and they use only non-GMO and organic ingredients in their blends, which is better for the soil, better for farmworkers, and better for us.

And just like Impact Hubs around the world, Numi is committed to making a difference in tea communities. Not only is Numi a founding B Corp, they focus on Fair Trade or Fair Labor standards for their farmers. According to their website, “The FLP program fosters direct partnerships, and encourages brand holders to have a direct role in the social development of their supply chain. It is also complementary to Fair Trade Certification and can be applied to products and supply chains where Fair Trade Certification is not available.” Finally, they are deeply committed to ecological sustainability, both in their packaging and in the offices.

Hopefully you’re inspired to sip on some of their yummy and teas now that you know how cool the company is. You can see more tea inspiration on their Instagram and learn more (or order more for your house) at Numi.com.