 Aloha and welcome to Stan the Energy Man. You'll notice Stan is out for the day so filling in is Rachel the Energy Woman and today on our STEM show we'll have a little bit of a power hour in half an hour with Executive Director of Center for Tomorrow's Leaders, Katie Cheng. So welcome to the show Katie thanks for joining us today. It's great to be here thanks for having me. So could you tell our audience a little bit about what Center for Tomorrow's Leaders is? Right so the heart of Center for Tomorrow's Leaders is something that I know that many people feel in Hawaii and that's that there's a lot of opportunity but there's also a lot of challenges for our state and so the idea behind the organization is that we should start earlier to find and then prepare our state's future leaders so that they can make a difference in the future but they can also start making a difference right now and so our mission and a phrase is to engage equip and empower Hawaii's future leaders to start making a difference now. Outstanding. So as I mentioned we're here in the power hour, power half hour and I really appreciate that you use that term in power and so for us this show is primarily focused on energy in Hawaii and because of the work we do at Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies we focus primarily on renewable energy. So when we talk about leaders and we talk about educating people today so that they can make the impact needed for tomorrow can you talk a little bit about how your programs or what your framework is like to empower, equip and I'm sorry the last E. Engage, equip and empower. You get it, you can equip and empower. Yeah sure so I can talk more specifically about maybe some energy related projects that the students are focused on but I think more generally we are our model is that we go and work directly with mainly public high schools and we go to the principal and we say how do we find the more non-traditional student leaders. So the ones who don't have leadership title but have potential to lead and so we go and we find those students and we actually offer weekly leadership development courses to empower them to make a difference. So we use the same framework it's a national research based model that's focused on character then goes to vision we talk about innovation and then lastly how do you empower others around a shared vision and based on that the students identify a need in their school in the community and they start to make a difference. I see so is the model something that when you come to a principal or you come to a school and you ask them if they're interested when you mention that you offer a curriculum is that to augment their existing schooling or is it like a class they take afterwards or sports or like what does it kind of fall under? Sure well for overall the Department of Education their overall vision is to help students be college and career ready so I think a lot of the soft skills and leadership is tied to that. The class itself is definitely elective though it's not necessarily tied to any of the core content areas but it definitely is in design to to find students and help them make a difference in whatever field they choose to go into. Okay so students who participate in the program or in this course what are their expectations what what kind of things are they doing throughout the course? Right well it's a little bit of a balance because in some cases we're offering the course within an existing program so leadership may not be something that students have deliberately chosen but we actually like that because sometimes leadership the mantle can be a really difficult burden to bear or they may not think that they're a leader so we find that it's good to meet students where they're at and to find them and to give them opportunities to lead. We also run another program which is a fellowship program and it was based loosely after Pacific Century Fellows which is a very prominent leadership program and so in that program students actually elect to be a part of the cohort in that sense they've already distinguished themselves as leaders and now they're looking to take their leadership to the next level so there's definitely more anticipation more expectation that comes in as a part of that program. Outstanding. So I jumped right into the heart of Center to the For Tomorrow's Leaders without asking about why why are you involved and how did Center for Tomorrow's Leaders come about? Okay so I was actually a part of the very first cohort of fellows that was ever offered and so the program has developed quite a bit over the last few years and we became our own independent nonprofit three years ago and so that still is pretty great that I was an alumni of the program that now has the privilege of leading the organization and so that's how I originally got affiliated. Outstanding. Now would you consider yourself a non-traditional leader at the time that you're in the program or? I would consider myself non-traditional in the sense that I didn't come from a traditional high school I'm actually I was home school my parents are both professors and so I kind of came on the fringe of the educational sector and I think that that actually really helps in our work because students can't really label me coming from a certain high school I kind of maybe I'm just weird I'm not sure so I would consider myself non-traditional in that sense and not taking a traditional school route. I see it seems to have served you well I've had the pleasure of working with you in the past and have met with a number of your fellows and outstanding really not even outstanding youth but just outstanding individuals yes so you definitely have run the organization well and so I appreciate the work that you've been doing thus far. Well thank you. I'm curious though as we talk about leadership and particularly in the scope of renewable energy the necessity for locally based energy solutions is becoming more prevalent I think especially as we see things happen not even just in our state and around the country but around the world and so the implications for what students who focus on energy projects like the impact that they will have do you know if that I'm curious if at this stage of their leadership development if they can grasp kind of how much they could potentially be taking on right well I think it's a testament to a lot of community organizations that have had a lot of great conversation with youth about the energy future of our state because whenever we put this before the students in the formable question of the greatest needs facing Hawaii usually energy related issues are now at the top whereas maybe even just a few years ago that wouldn't have been the case so I think the level of awareness is certainly there and now we're trying to find ways that students can deal with a really big issue in you know a school year or in a relatively small amount of time so we had one project called Fahrenheit 73 and I was trying to address this problem that classrooms are really really hot and it's a problem that's ongoing and so they got together and they crowd funded about $20,000 for a affordable take ac unit at a portable classroom at Campbell High School there's a great example of students being able to make a difference in a big issue but being able to take that first step so we're hopeful that we can replicate that kind of process for more energy related projects okay what type of partnerships are needed to evidence something like that you mentioned crowdfunding so dollars certainly I'm sure are important but what are some of the other pieces that make that project or projects like that function yeah there were a lot of great partners we have volunteer coaches on our side that are working directly with the students on the simple things of mill merges and things that are needed to get the word out there are obviously partnership directly with the school and with the department of education there was a lot of great support there from facilities and then of course the corporate partners and then the actual company that installed the pvac unit so it was a lot of people working together and that's the journey of leadership that the students got to experience they got to experience a shared vision so that was very exciting that's incredible can you talk to me a little bit about the range of students like what grade or what age is kind of where are they in their high school yeah so we're we focus at the high school level and for our school-based program we try and find students that are younger freshmen sophomore so they can develop and by the time they get to our fellowship program we're looking at 11th and 12th graders so older students excellent but do you find um let's see I guess how does interest like how how do you how do the students get the word out in the school so the principal adopts the concept and they say yes we want the center schools and how does that reach the students right so sometimes when we go to a school we train within an existing program so a couple at high school this year we'll be working within an academy okay so the students are already there and there's already a structure for it in other places like McKinley High School and Roosevelt High School we actually go to teachers and ask for nominations so we'll actually give them a scenario of what leadership potential may be like so it could be the student that at lunch they're standing in the tree and all the students go and pay tribute to them but they would never be formally involved in anything in school so the teachers can kind of have visual what they might look like and then they can nominate them for the course so we can try and find different ways to find that demographic of student knowing that they don't necessarily want to be found yet so I think that's a bit of the challenge that is an interesting challenge I mean outside of youth just leadership in a general sense you often and I'm not going to go all philosophical but why we have a representative government is because many times the things that we're concerned about and we have opinions about they're not always things that we want to represent as individuals as our community leaders right and so when you find that non-traditional leader or you find the student who necessarily may not necessarily be keen on leading what does that pathway to leadership look like like I'm curious if I I'm just curious I guess your pathway as well but like how does that progression take place yeah well we're kind of in the beginning stages of thinking that through once you get identified in high school and you have this these tools to become a leader what happens as you progress to college and career and I think at this stage a lot of it is possibility thinking of expanding the horizon to think maybe I don't just have to do this or I just have to do that but as a leader there are many opportunities maybe even ones that I'm not aware of and so I think you know guest speakers mentorship opportunities and then of course this project base is really important to develop small wins and to see opportunities but how that comes for Center for Tomorrow's leaders in terms of what do alumni then go do right that's something that that we need to develop it would be great to see political candidates it'd be great to see startups it'd be great to see a lot of really exciting things like that but we're that's something that we're going to need to develop as an organization interesting so in that process of development do you see that as partial developing relationships with I guess current industry professionals or you mentioned volunteer mentors I believe in coaches so are those from select industries I guess what I'm leading to is as we grow in this energy space and as it's highlighted as a top concern in your cohorts like how do we bridge that gap if there is one absolutely I think you know the the mentors and the guest speakers that we have in the program in the beginning stages we're very business and government focused but as we started to realize there are different issues at play and there are obviously developing industries then our guest speakers have to expand and so energy is definitely an area that we've started to see more guest speakers and that's another great example of possibility thinking and people thinking creatively about renewable energy and different goals that's always a great topic for the students to hear from so that's again something that we need to develop as we move forward outstanding and then for alumni how do they if they do how do they engage with the ongoing cohorts actually I'm guessing a graduation takes place at some point yeah so we're really happy this year we had our first alum become a member of our board of directors she's currently an attorney and she just joined our board and then almost our entire volunteer coaching team for our fellow's program are alumni so they're definitely building ways for them to come back to make a difference and to start to mentor and we're also trying to bring them together in a social setting with mixers and things like that so that we can start to share ideas and hopefully it'll grow organically in terms of you know how to alumni come back home the ones that aren't home and the ones that are here how do they start to develop eyes to see opportunities here in Hawaii I'm sorry what was that last term type of opportunities or any sort of opportunity just eyes to see the opportunities okay that may be here that they may not be aware of I thought you mentioned an acronym and I'm like this is a new one no no no no acronym cto okay acronym okay we'll follow that one I can follow that one it's exciting to see really the progression and as I mentioned I've worked with you and seen some of the leaders that you've helped to groom and I've been able to witness some of this possibility thinking I hadn't really known that that was a piece of the program in part of development but I've been really keen on recognizing people taking existing technologies and existing capabilities and saying we're not really using them to the best ability that we could and so one of the students I met with recently he I mean it's I feel like I'm not that old but when people say things to me about virtual reality and they're like Rachel and then you can do this and you can have meetings in those platforms and and I'm thinking this happens like right now this sounds very minority report but it's press a day so when you get ideas like that when you have students who are thinking so far outside of not even necessarily boxes but outside of your experience how do you guide that how do you hone that and and direct it well that's really interesting and I think having curriculum that's focused on both vision and projects is a way to really do that so when you're dreaming about what the picture is of where it is that you really want to go you can think as big as you want but by adding a really strong project component to the leadership curriculum they're obviously going to be constrained somewhat by time and resources so that's something that a leader has to always balance that's probably the number one thing a leader has to do and so I think that's really that's really helpful when you talk about technologies and things like that that's something that we haven't really even explored and I think that that has a lot of potential too and students realizing what they can do and how we can actually mentor and give them opportunities to explore what it is that they're dreaming about right that's fascinating so we're going to take a bit of a break we're going to allow the audience to dream of it and see what the future could be and we'll come back in a little bit with Katie Chang from Center for Tomorrow's Leaders. Aloha I'm Carl Campania I hope you please visit us this summer it's a wonderful summer it's actually a cooler summer than we're used to but I hope that you come back and visit us and watch our show education movers shakers and performers here on Think Tech Hawaii it's at noon every Wednesday see you then. Aloha I'm Kirsten Baumgart Turner and I'm fortunate to be able to host Sustainable Hawaii at ThinkTechHawaii.com I hope you'll join in with us every Tuesday from 12 noon to 1 p.m to see the interesting people we have to share with you their information. Aloha. Hi I'm Ethan Allen host of likeable science here on ThinkTechHawaii.com I hope you'll join me every Friday at 2 p.m to discover what's likeable about science. Aloha how you doing welcome to Iwachi Talk I'm here Gordo the Texar on ThinkTech Hawaii I'm here with my good old buddy Andrew the security guy. Hey everybody how you doing Aloha. Good to have Andrew here in the house please join us every Friday from 1 to 130 and follow us up on YouTube and remember as we say at the end of every show how you doing. And we're back with Stan the energy man here in our power half hour I'm Rachel the energy woman standing in for stan and today we've been sitting and chatting with Katie from Center for Tomorrow's Leaders just to recap a bit we talked about dreaming some and primarily with with leaders thinking outside of the box and pressing boundaries and possibility thinking. So we talked about energy and how really we're out of time now in Hawaii but globally where we have to really think of new ways to use existing technologies as well as what's possible for things that perhaps we even haven't conceptualized yet. So if we could talk a little bit about the upcoming project that you and I have so first center for tomorrow's leaders and Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies can you talk a little bit about how that came to be. Sure so basically in our fellow's cohort we now have 20 students who are juniors and seniors that represent both our public and our private high schools and they've come together and so we divide that group of 20 into four project teams and we try and identify some of the key areas that our state is going to face and so our partnership with HKAT was perfect because it's something that's really really important and you graciously agreed to mentor a student project so there's going to be a group of students we're going to partner together and within that time try and figure out how we can make a difference in that in that area and maybe you can talk a little bit more about the specifics of it. Definitely I'm really excited about this project actually internships and KUPU I know is one of the programs that you're familiar with and partner with and just their model of not only engaging youth with existing industry but identifying spaces for people to grow and create jobs and green business which I think is important and pivotal to us as a state making a transition to a more sustainable future so we have the opportunity at HKAT through many of our renewable energy research and development projects to share that message and to showcase the possibilities that that the state can undertake or that people can come in and exercise and so to be able to have students and to have students with ideas that I mean we couldn't even fathom we're really excited to be able to push our own boundaries in a space that's I don't want to say playful but it's a space that we're allowed to fail for we're able to make mistakes and so to have I mean not even nontraditional leaders but just to have the caliber of students that we've seen come through the program we're really excited to participate so we appreciate you extending that offer. Yes and I think what's really exciting too is that what you folks are looking to do is really to create a pipeline back so what are we trying to do and how do we work with students young people at every age so that they're actually providing a structure to be able to grow into these careers so I think it's very strategic and we're really excited about it as well. So I'm going to nerd out for a little bit. Absolutely. Please do. I think it's really fascinating just the implications that some of the basic concepts that we forward in renewable energy technology one of the things that we talk about often is distributed energy and so sometimes you'll hear that in the form of microgrid you'll hear people talk about nano grids and localized energy production but essentially what that means is creating a framework where you have redundancy and creating those pipelines so that if you have generation and distribution and storage that you have them co-located in such a way that each of those are are as efficient as possible in that system. Sure. So when I think about leadership and oftentimes people think of leaders as people at you know some progress stage in their career and they've managed a number of people and they've done a number of project and seen a number of things and so those people are leaders but to identify people early on in that pathway and to pair them with people who may be further along in the progression of their leadership and to epitomize each of them in those stages in a system is like I mean I get chicken skin thinking about it. Yeah so it's really exciting just that the parallels between energy kind of basic concepts of systems and then the program that you're forwarding. Absolutely absolutely you know it's a great it's an excellent analogy and the analogy sometimes we use to that isn't as science related but quite so nerdy. Well I think it's fantastic but even the sports analogy of providing opportunities for development because we can't expect major league play right away. Right. We have to have ways that we're developing talents. Right so how do we get there and I think in another show we joke about it in the office often we say how do you eat an elephant it's one bite at a time. Absolutely. And so if the elephant is this renewable energy sphere and if the elephant is making sure that we have reliable power and making sure that we have more local opportunities for people who want to stay home and valuable opportunities that are impactful positively for the island for people who want to come and make this their home I think that starts with creating leadership opportunities but even just making people aware that leadership is not outside of their reach. Absolutely. And so I've met a few of the students who've come through the program I've been able to work with some other in the program and I'm curious how do they identify what is like what's important in their community and what is what does it look like for someone who's perhaps not really wanting to be in the forefront to be selected to be groomed to become a leader and then for them to say this is something that's important to me in my community and I know that I can have this impact so what does that look like. Sure well part of the training is really we want students to develop eyes to see needs around them and not just needs that they think are important they want to be important but needs that actually are important and so as students do the market research as they start to identify issues in their school in their community a lot of it has to do with interviews and interviewing people that they don't know. Okay. So trying to get a sense of what are the what are the problems what are the opportunities so an example would be at our class at McKinley they started realizing that there were a lot of independent living facilities for senior citizens around their high school and I realized that loneliness was a huge issue as they started to interview and they started to get a sense of how many were independently living independently and so they ended up designing a project based on that and it culminated in a senior prom so it was a prom for senior citizens. So that over 100 seniors attended and they came together and they actually got to meet each other and exchange phone numbers and so I think it's a great example of they suspected there was a need but when they actually started doing research they realized the need was right there in their community and so hopefully we can develop that more and more with every school in their surrounding community. Wow that's powerful. Yeah it was a great project. That's amazing so I mentioned Coupu if you're able to are you able to name some of your other partners and what those work and relationships look like? Yeah so well for our fellow's program of course HCAP we're really excited about that. We also are working on a partnership with an international school so that the students can design a partnership in collaboration. We're looking at a water related project Catholic Charities has been a great partner for social related fellow United Way so there have been a lot of really great project mentors along the way that are really strong in their content area and really appreciate the energy that our young people can bring to some of these problems. Wow and so you mentioned the five project teams. Do you identify those project teams by areas of interest or how do you break that group up? Yeah so we've actually over the years we've actually put more structure into the projects realizing that students some students need the structure and some are fine with just creating as they go and so it's part of Center for Tomorrow's Leader is something that we've wanted to do to move not just in social services but moving into STEM and other areas as well and so that's where a lot of these projects were designed really brainstorming with our stakeholders and realizing where it is that we want to go so hopefully that's something that can change every year and develop as Hawaii's needs develop and are hopefully solved. Yes yes indeed it's funny we so I think you probably gathered that we joke a bit in our office so I'm going to give you another one which is great but not that it's good to have problems but problems ensure that you have people working on solutions that's true so in that way it's awesome to continue to collaborate and it's awesome to push people to think outside of their norms. So if there would be a call to action for Center for Tomorrow's Leaders what type of partnerships or what sort of engagement like what needs do you have presently? Well yeah that's great and I think you know first off many people who watch the show and who are interested in Hawaii's future many of them are parents themselves and so being able to spread the word about Center for Tomorrow's Leaders the programs that we offer if you know a student that goes to a certain school or even for our fellowship program I think the more students the more diverse students that are involved in this is obviously going to be a benefit for all of us and so I think help in spreading the word is really important and then as we've talked extensively about mentorship for the projects and for the students themselves is a big part of what we do and so maybe there's a sector that we haven't thought about yet maybe especially in some of the creative industries and so of any recommendations that people would like to go to our website and recommend opportunities like that we're always looking for more opportunities so that would be wonderful as well. Okay can you tell me the timeline of engagement so if I as a parent said hey I would like this at my child's school and then I convinced my principal or do I start with you and then how long does it take to you guys come and how do you decide? That's great so we've pretty much set our schedule for this school year so we operate very much on a school schedule so for our fellows program we select students in the spring so the applications come out on our website and we select during that time for our school-based program if a school is interested we normally do it a year in advance so we do the planning that first school year with a plan to launch right when school starts the fall of the following year and so that's kind of the timeline that we're looking at but starting the conversation early is always better. Okay so with the year out does the buy-in need to come from the principal or is it yes okay? Usually it is usually it's from a principal or maybe it's just someone that's interested that wants to set up that introductory meeting and then we can see what the needs of the school are. Okay and so as a community member if I were a parent who had a high school child or the high school that the program wasn't yet offered I could set up a meeting with my principal and someone from Center for Tomorrow's Leaders. That's right and we actually have an interest form on our website so it goes directly to our staff and so that would be the best place to go. What is your website? It's Center for Tomorrow's Leaders dot o-r-g. And no hyphens dashes or anything all spread out on work. Yep absolutely. Very good. You've been generous with your time both with Center for Tomorrow's Leaders and with us here today and we appreciate that sincerely. I've enjoyed working with you it's really awesome to be able to. Likewise very much. Thank you it's awesome to have this time to chat with you and share with the community the work that you're doing. So as you heard Center for Tomorrow's Leaders is open to suggestions or open to your engagement. So if you have an interest go to Center for Tomorrow's Leaders dot org and thank you for tuning in for Stand the Energy Man with Rachel the Energy Woman. We hope you have an excellent weekend. Enjoy your Aloha Friday. Take care.