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Interview with Meli James of Mana Up

By George Yarbrough

We are so excited to be a part of the #startupparadise that is Hawaii. We share a vision with many accelerators, businesses, organizations, and individuals to expand business opportunities here in the islands, and beyond.

One such visionary, whom we are proud to call a friend and a partner, is Meli James. She’s the President of the Board of Directors of the Hawaii Venture Capital Association and the Founder of Mana Up, an accelerator for packaged goods and brands in Hawaii. She’s a leader in the business community here in Honolulu, and she had some awesome thoughts to share during a recent conversation at her offices in Honolulu.

Meli understands that connecting Hawaii’s business leaders at locations like Impact Hub HNL is vital to the growth of our startup ecosystem, and is helpful to connect entrepreneurs with each other. Along with alternative workspaces, she’s excited to see the type of investment campaign we’re running. She says these different types of investment – beyond the traditional bank loan or angel investors– can create a lot more opportunity in the islands.

Take a peek at the video below to learn more about her thoughts!

Announcing our 2019 Impact Partners

Impact Hub HNL is fortunate to partner with select local businesses to help make a bigger impact in our community.

Impact Hubs worldwide are united in the commitment to make social impact in the community, and locally we are grateful for the support of our 2019 Impact Partners.

These companies have demonstrated their support for the growing entrepreneurial and small business community in Honolulu. All Impact Partners are dedicated to bettering Hawaii through their thoughtful business actions.

Our Impact Partner Circle serves as a valuable advisory council that provides sponsorship of events and memberships, strategic insights, and thought leadership for the Impact Hub HNL community. We are proud to announce continued partnership with the following organizations: :

airbnb

Airbnb is a homeshare and experience app that helps create a world of global citizens. With 4,500,000 listings in over 65,000 cities in 191 countries, Airbnb offers the widest variety of unique spaces for rent, whether you want a room, a house, a boat, a tent, or a castle (along with offering other awesome experiences.)

airbnb’s work supports the following SDGs:

American Savings Bank

American Savings Bank is one of the primary financial institutions in the state of Hawaii, and have been serving Hawaii’s businesses and communities since 1925. ASB provides a full range of financial products and services, including business and consumer banking, home loans, insurance and investments.

We’ve partnered with ASB for many events at Impact Hub HNL that help grow financial literacy in the community, including the free public event entitled Building Community with Women Entrepreneurs that aims to build communication and connection between female entrepreneurs and freelancers in our community.

ASB’s work supports the following SDGs:

Elemental Excelerator

One of the leading cleantech incubators in the world, Elemental Excelerator is committed to deploying solutions that make direct impacts on our energy and water usage across the state and throughout the Asia-Pacific region. They work in partnership with the Emerson Collective’s Elemental platform, which is focused on balancing the needs of humanity and nature by supporting scalable, equitable, and innovative solutions.

Elemental Excelerator’s work supports the following SDGs:

Hawaii Investment Ready

Hawaii Investment Ready (HIR) is an accelerator program designed to help Hawaii businesses thrive. Their statewide peer-to-peer learning program has been created to support the sustainability of island social enterprises so that they can scale their businesses in Hawaii and beyond.

HIR’s work supports the following SDGs:

simplicityHR by Altres

ALTRES Staffing is Hawaii’s largest staffing and recruiting company, with seven offices across the state, and simplicityHR by ALTRES serves as the human resources “back office” for more than 2,200 local businesses. For nearly 50 years, they have been Hawaii’s #1 HR outsourcing company and is ranked as one of Hawaii’s Best Places to Work.

Altres’ work supports the following SDGs:

Ulupono

Ulupono Initiative is a local non-profit that invests in a more sustainable Hawaii. Founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidiyar. Ulupono seeks to invest in and help grow local organizations involved in clean/renewable energy, diversified agriculture, and waste-to-energy management – choosing to invest in projects that have high potential for creating large-scale social impact. They invest in companies focused on improving the local energy, food, water, and waste sectors.

Ulupono’s work supports the following SDGs:

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.