 Welcome to another episode of Hospitality of Hawaii. I'm the host, John Kanching, and it gives me great pleasure every two weeks to bring different leaders, executives, movers and shakers that are involved in so many different facets of our visitor industry. So through the last two months, we've had executives from our hotel industry, marketing organizations, airlines, technology, and I am so proud and pleased to bring in yet another facet of our state's most important visitor industry. I'd like to introduce Julie Morikawa. She's the president of Climb High, and I personally am very interested in learning more about not only Julie's background, but also how she developed the idea, the concept, and how she's been able to grow Climb High to what it is. So please join me in welcoming Julie Morikawa, president of Climb High. Aloha, ma halo John. Yes, so thank you for having us here today. We're really happy to share more about Climb High and our wonderful journey. So Climb High is a 501c3 nonprofit that works with businesses, all types of opportunity providers and educational institutions and educators and students and it's focused on providing exposure to our cakey and the on future career paths and the process necessary to achieve those goals. And so the story really begins for Climb High with my past on Hawaii Island. And as it would be, no koala, moku o Hawaii mayau, o a pa'aba'a kamakani, o ka'au ka'ua. I cherish my Paniola roots in koala with the strong o pa'a'a winds and the fine ka'au rain. And to most it would seem like humble beginnings, but to me it was a richest childhood anyone could ever have. And so I grew up outside outdoors, whether it was in the pastures or on the rocky koala coast diving and fishing. And so I grew up snacking on opihi and haukiuki. For those of you that don't know those, opihi is a mollusk and a limpid, sorry, and the haukiuki is a local sea urchin. And for my birthday, if anyone knows, it's so hard to harvest them. It's not something that you really want to be doing. It takes so long to get them. So for my birthday, my family would harvest it for me and let me eat to my heart's content, and that I would do. And the haukiuki makes a purple dye. And so the Hawaiians use it for that coloring. And so when you eat a lot of it, as I would my lips and my fingers would all be colored purple for days. But it's these small acts that really led to great learnings for me and taught me the value of what was really important in life and also to listen to my na'au, what it was telling me was the right path forward. So in high school, when it came time to make that next step decision, I felt really ill-prepared to do that. And it's a life-changing decision. And I just had so little background and information to make that. And so you cling to your experiences, you cling to everything from your past, everything you've been exposed to, to weigh on that decision. And for me, it was dancing hula in the hotel. So it led me to a hospitality university. And once I got there, it then led me to see the whole vast array of career opportunities that were available in the hospitality industry. And I felt so alone. There was not an easy way. There wasn't a tool to then help you get exposed to all of these experiences. So there I went. And I went to go and attack them one by one. And so I did housekeeping at the Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York City. And then it was food and beverage at the Bellagio in Vegas. Then it was off to front desk in Florida at Walt Disney World's Polynesian Resort. And then to consulting in Boston and then Expedia. I then went off to Australia at rest of Asia and Europe to open Expedia offices and back to Hawaii. Let's start for a second there. So it was great. I mean, I didn't know that you had that background and you're from the Big Island, but now I can see how that created that curiosity that you had about learning more. And then obviously back then, maybe even on the neighbor islands and even here locally on Oahu, there's not that many resources that can help guide you to the next step. So after you did a bunch of those different type of activities and occupations, tell me a little bit about what was the technology part? What drove you into the technology part after being in operations? And because you spent a lot of your career in Expedia and then moving from Expedia into different tech related parts of the industry. So talk a little bit about that if you would. Yeah, well, during dating myself, that was the time when online travel agents were taking off and e-commerce was really blossoming. So that was natural progression for me to move into that area. But I think what really stirred this whole journey was during that time, that's when climb high was born because I realized at that moment, all of these things that I've been traversing the globe for were really, I was able to do all of that at home in Hawaii and I just had no idea. So it was born because there had to be an easier way to create a more efficient, a more equitable way for our keiki to gain exposure and experience and support about future career paths here in Hawaii. Okay, great. So before we talk a little bit more about climb high and as you told me earlier before we started to show a lot of it we'll kind of explain itself. I wanted to get your thoughts on some of the, obviously this return of tourism after the pandemic has caught a lot of businesses by surprise. I mean, I know no one expected that the spring break level of business was gonna be anywhere near to what it was. And as I mentioned on other shows that when you listen to these so-called experts from the Smith Travel Research, they were saying Hawaii was gonna be one of the last destinations to regain pre-pandemic levels and not till maybe late 2022 or even 23 and at one point they were saying early 2024. But here we are the month of May, month of June. I mean, things are quite not back to the pre-pandemic levels, but it is pretty impressive and hotels activities are trying to staff up like crazy. Conversely, we're starting to see more news, more articles for, you know, more talk about residents not liking that busy nest anymore. I mean, there was just a recent article, some newspaper was quoted, you know, residents were quoted, I think in Canni talking about how they are so busy they're overrun with visitors. So talk a little bit about that. How do you personally feel about that? And I'm not sure if you've heard anything about the Oahu destination management action plans that all the different counties have to deal with. But what are your thoughts on that Julie? Just from not only from your climb high standpoint but as someone who's been involved in the industry for a long time and someone who will be involved in the industry probably for another, you know, a long time moving forward. Yeah, and as a Keikioka Aina, you know, what do we want to perpetuate for our future? And so these are headlines now, right? But resident sentiment and open jobs, filling all these open jobs, all of this has been very, very important to us from the very beginning and we've been focused on it for a long time. And to me, right, we couldn't start doing anything until we understood where is that sentiment coming from? What drives it? What do we need to understand that we need to fix? And yes, there's all of those items that you mentioned where there's the overtourism and when we went out and we asked the students and we asked the teachers and we asked the community, you know, what drives that? It was, yes, you know, we want our parking cells. We want to be able to use our beaches. We want people to respect our culture. But as we started to dive in, we also found out, you know, that to them hospitality meant only housekeeping that there wasn't much more to it other than housekeeping. And that tourism takes, it doesn't give back at all. So we quickly realized that there was an awareness and education issue that we as an industry needed to come out and address. And in the right way, right? Because this is not something that you can address. You need an audience and to do that, you need to attract that audience and you need to inspire them to understand and want to listen. And so we also had other issues that need to be addressed, right? And that's about equitable access to opportunities, financial self-sufficiency. We have an aging workforce as well, right? That we're dealing with in the industry and beyond. And also people leaving, right? We saw all of those studies that the households that are leaving, you know? And so all of that we wanted to be able to address. And that's where our program started to evolve and to come into play with the leadership exploration inspiration programs that are now nine years old and plus, and you know, it's about letting the students see it from their own perspectives and understand what their challenges are and understanding, getting to that right place of understanding the value of tourism on their own. And so this year we held our event virtually for, and each of these events are always for a thousand students across the state. We bring them all in usually in a day long event, but this year's one was online. And we involve college students as well as hundreds of businesses. And so I just wanna share a quick video for you so that you can kind of gain a sense for what we're doing and what these students gleam on their own when they're allowed to speak about it, you know, on what it actually means to them. So we could roll the video. Aloha and thank you for joining us today to discuss your thoughts on the value of tourism here in Hawaii. Mahalo Waianai for being here. Mahalo Kapolei and Aloha. Campbell, great to have you. Mahalo for being here. To our Hawaii Pacific University, along with Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School. Mahalo for being here today. Give me one career in the visitor industry. Could be like hotel management. Maika, a hotel management, that's a good one. Like flight attendants. Boom, flight attendant. We're making our way back to our airport and our guest arrivals. Yeah. You know, like boat riders? Like tourists, like they come down and like at Waianai Boat Harbor, there's like the dolphin excursions. They may be here for a special event or to see our special places and museums. Sometimes we see the visitor industry as benefiting our visitors. But really, how does it benefit us? From the visitors, our tax revenue comes in and it affects us because it gives us more people and locals from over here more jobs. The taxes that we get from tourism pay for a lot of things, like our roads and specifically in Kapolei where we all live. It helps with things like our libraries and our parks and we see them doing all these construction zones all the time. So it really helps, especially throughout the whole island and it's taking care of our schooling, our fire departments. Overall, when tourists spend money here, it comes back to us. Our local colleges and universities have a really big deal to me because I wouldn't want tuition to go up or programs to be eliminated because we don't have the money from tourism. Taxes from tourism also helps our environment too. I live out on a large shore and there is a partnership with state, federal, tax dollars that come from our visitor industry and collectively, they're helping to protect over 600 acres here on the North Shore. So Maya, you're absolutely correct. My answer might not be like a physical resources but when receiving tourism, you also receive new people and like if you get along and have like, like communicate with them and you start to build a bond and then build friendship and then usually close friends turn into a nice family. I want to talk about the impacts that visitors may have on these destinations. One of our friends just had to move away from Hawaii because his parents lost their jobs since people weren't visiting us. Well, I guess it's important to have lots of visitors so we can have jobs and stay here in our home. I feel like a lot of tourists, they feel like Waianae is like a bad place. You know, like these people that are coming in, they shouldn't feel like one area is any worse than another area. Probably what we can do about that is like, show some kindness and share some aloha with the visitors, like showing like what Hawaii's like and how we can share our love. I feel like not only is tourism important for our economy, but it's also, it can also solve a lot of misconceptions about Hawaii. Like I believe that a lot of people think that Hawaii is just a vacation spot, but there's like a bunch of histories surrounding Hawaiian people and their culture and it's a good opportunity for other people to come in and really learn. What is your views on culture and visitor industry? And is there, you know, do they connect? Yeah, I think they really do connect. And I love how when they do connect, we get to express our aloha spirit. We get to show all like, you know, the tourists how we do it in Hawaii. Culture means a lot to us. And when visitors come, they get to learn our culture and we get to learn their culture. So it's kind of a culture exchange in a way that we get to learn. That was great. That was great. So tell me, Julia, how do we, who's seeing this video, right? I mean, it's great that you had this conversation, but how do we get this message out to the rest of the people? I mean, it's great that children and the kids feel that way. But I was, you know, there's, you know, you probably remember a long time ago, there was that commercial about where your dollar goes. You remember that where your dollar went that the visitors spent? And, you know, obviously it was old school, but it really showed where every single dollar that came from the visitor industry went and how it benefited that. So how do we take this message that you instilled to these children or these kids or young adults and adults? You know, I mean, is this something that the HDA should be doing more and the state should be doing more? So that, you know, you have not just children, but you have adults and business people saying the same messages. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a great question and not an easy one to attack. But the way that we've approached it is quite the opposite. We don't go out with a messaging. There's no data deck. You know, that's the way all of us in the business community like to do it. Let's put the data together and let's go out actually, but out there in the community, it's quite the opposite. We need to listen. And I hope we've kind of shown you in this way that there was no agenda. We let them speak about what was important to them during the pandemic and it was not being able to travel. Some of the boys couldn't get to those tournaments that were going to get the Scouts to look at them. People missed going to Disneyland, missed going to Vegas. It was those conversations that got us moving in the right direction. So we could talk about, you know, well, do you know how you get on those flights? Yeah, that it takes people coming in in order for us to be able to go out and just, but taking the points that they made, letting them tell us what was important to them first. And so I think that carries, you know, well beyond all of this to even as we, you know, project this out into the community is the same thing is not going with our agenda, but listening and understanding what's important to the community and helping them understand how tourism helps because it does, it plays into every aspect of our life. So many reports have come out, right? Every business was affected as soon as tourism plummeted. Right, okay. So, you know, obviously, you know, I know there's a lot of different parts of climb pie. Why don't you share with the audience, you know, all the other things that you're doing with climb pie? I know you have another video queued up and you can either, you know, introduce that or you can, you know, share whatever it is you want to share about climb. Yeah, absolutely. So I think the next progression, so now that you've seen that video on the student work, right, the work really is just the beginning there. It then goes to the educators, right? We need to educate our teachers so they can pass on that messaging. And so we just did a partnership with the Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association, Mufian team there, and we just issued our first teacher awards. In compilation with that, we also saw the studies on teacher fatigue that was happening through COVID-19. So we wanted to honor and make sure we were aware of all of that. So we gave $2,000 awards to two teachers that had proven leadership and also have the ability to teach about the industry. And so they will connect over the summer with many different leaders throughout the industry. We're calling it immersion. And so that award allows them to go out and try anything that they'd like to try in the industry to get exposed to it. We are linking them up. They will have meetings with HLTA, the Hawaii Tourism Authority, with the Visitors Bureau, the local ones, since this was statewide, so we have one teacher from Hawaii Island, one teacher from YNI, so they'll connect with their local Visitors Bureau. They will get a mentor from the industry provided by HLTA, and they will get job shadowing for 40 hours in a business of their interest. And so we've just issued that and it was very successful. And so we're hoping to do more of that with our educators. And then, again, everything, we try to solve these problems systemically and systematically. And so from there, we realized that there are pathways in our schools, right? And there's a hospitality pathway that we need to put attention to. As it's rather unpopular going along with resident sentiment. So how do we make it and put it on a competitive playing field? And so, John, I hope you're seeing there's this whole arena that we really, as an industry, hadn't been paying much attention to. And so as I started to dive in, I saw there was much needed and it's been like peeling back this layer of this wide web that is the K through 12 and post-secondary systems. And so what we found in there is that a lot of students were going to pathways because of the benefits of certificates that existed in other pathways. And as we know for hospitality, there isn't one standard, but let's put something together that we can agree upon and gives our students a leg up. So we created the Climb High Service Excellence Certificate. So we partnered with Cornell University, Hawaii Tourism Authority, and ourselves and we put together a wonderful custom program that brings together world-renowned hospitality curriculum with Aloha Spirit and the Aloha Spirit Law. And so this past year, we had over 40 teachers train, 600 students already received the certificate and we'll be continuing that program. And we're actually seeing businesses reach out to us as well on that. And so we're automating the program. And so if there's other businesses that want that, your people walk away with a certificate from Cornell University and a certificate from Climb High. That's fabulous. I have to admit, I've not heard of that. And maybe because, and I don't know, maybe it's a tightly kept secret among the HR people or the general managers and in that level, but I frankly had not heard about, but it sounds amazing. And so what's the next step then? So have there been any recap or follow-up? Now, as students begin to get these certificates, are they being hired? Are our employers giving them more of an opportunity rather and kind of giving that certificate more value, saying that, hey, I understand that you've done this. You're not coming in straight out of college. You're straight out of high school with no background. So yeah, no, I appreciate that the time and the effort that you took to get this certificate. Are you seeing that type of results or getting that feedback from students as they begin looking for jobs? Yeah, absolutely. And so this is the first year. So a lot of the students are graduating now with that certificate or the certificates and going out there. But really, yes, we can't wait to see all of that happening. But secondly, what they're finding once they take this course, which are these nine or nine modules, why we create is because it goes well beyond that piece of paper. We're providing them with job skills but more so life skills. And so where we're hoping to see that impact is in their interviews, the skills that they learn through these modules. We hope they're applying in their interviews that will make them stand out and help them speak intelligently about that job that's ahead of them. So is this climb high and the excellent certificate program is this available to only public school, high schools or is it available also to private schools as well? It's available to anyone. Like I said, even companies, we've automated it. So we have it available to everyone right now. The program for the HTA, with HTA, sorry, was a program with the Hawaii Department of Education. Okay, so as I mentioned earlier, I mean, our time goes by pretty quick. I know you have another video. Now, this video that you're showing, is it gonna talk about your new climb high bridge? And if not, maybe you wanna talk a little bit about that. Absolutely, see, you're so good. Yes, so you talked about what's next. And so after all of this, you know, we kept getting asked, hey, can you do more? There needs to be more done for a connection between businesses and educators. There just needs to be- And not just the visitor industry, right? I mean- Yeah, absolutely. And so we've gone well beyond now the visitor industry. And so the climb high bridge is created to solve that, to create an efficient way for people to connect. And so I have a quick video to just kind of explain what is that? And we've got 10 different opportunity types that people place themselves in. So if you can play the video. Climb high has been a game changer. I mean, it takes a lot of effort to kind of familiarize yourself with the opportunities that exist. And then a lot of effort to reach out to individual students. But with climb high, it became super efficient and super fun. I mean, you just put your information out there and then you have people contact you that are interested. And the school we talked with today, I didn't even know existed. So I would have never reached out to them. But with climb high, that kind of communication and that interaction happened immediately and automatically. So it's very easy, very efficient and very impactful for both myself and hopefully for the students. This is our second year working with climb high bridge. It's been awesome without their help. I would not be able to have made any of these connections. I wouldn't know how to reach Matt to be able to ask for his help in sharing his experiences with the organization and beyond with my students. It has made it so much easier. In the past, I've had to solicit invitations from coworkers to get their contacts. And it takes a lot of time. And so having everything, especially with the portal makes it so much easier. It's been a lovely experience. And I'm looking forward to having more and more students engage with all the different organizations. My bridge there, we have many resources that you can find on the website. And Julie, how long have you had the climb high bridge portal available and for students and businesses? So officially, the Hawaii Executive Collaborative gifted the tool to the Hawaii Department of Education in mid-December. And so we spent the last semester rolling it out to all of the high school educators. And then moving into intermediate, we'll be picking up elementary at the beginning of the new school year. So currently there are over 2,000 educators that are live on the portal. And we have 270 businesses that are live and posting opportunities. And so it's really a wonderful tribute to Aloha Aku Aloha Mai during this whole pandemic that it was during the craziest of times when businesses needed help themselves that they were all still coming forward to help and to offer. And so everyone is welcome. It's not just for businesses, opportunity providers. We have wonderful results. So really we started to roll out educators by January. And at the end of this school year, we had over 270 requests that led to over 11,800 students being touched by these experiences. Oh, that's amazing. Over 1,000 hours given by businesses and over 700 educators that were able to be a part of these events. So it's scalable, it's working and we need everyone's kokuwa because this project only can exist in Hawaii with our values of Aloha and Ohana. Do you see any predominant type of businesses that are more apt to access the portal and get engaged or has it pretty much been across the spectrum? It's been across the spectrum and it is we're scratching the surface. So there's 270 businesses and it's really been about who wants to come in. And so we also take requests from the teachers if there are needs and try to fulfill those. But it's also new, we need everyone's help. And really it's about representing what is here in Hawaii as well. So if you're here and you have an opportunity that you can, you're available. And when I say opportunity, this isn't a hard thing. There's guest speaking, there's guest judging, there's career readiness. There's very passive events, it's very low risk. You can decline, you can accept. So when we say come help, it's not a huge commitment out of anyone's time. And it's also about building that scalability. So if we talk about what's going on in our communities, schools are moving towards this academy structure. We need to be creating as a business community more scalable opportunities. It won't exist in internships. We all know how hard those are, right? It's going to exist in us creating these types of exposure opportunities. So... I was gonna ask you, Julie, because we're running out of time to get those in comments but you already did fabulously. So unfortunately our time is up but I wanna thank Julie Morikawa, president of Climb High for not only spending the last 30 minutes with me and all of us that either either live or later on if you tune in on our YouTube channel but also for all the work that she and everyone else involved with Climb High has been doing through the years to help educate and provide that pathway for Hawaii use and also our businesses. So thank you, Julie. On behalf of the Think Tech Hawaii platform, again, this is Hospitality Hawaii. Thank you for joining us and we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Aloha.