 And welcome to this week's edition of Business in Hawai'i. I'm Dela Nyonegida and we are broadcasting live from Think Tech Studios in downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in live, we're at www.thinktechhawaii.com and you may subscribe to get on our mailing list at that site as well. The theme of Business in Hawai'i is to share with you stories of local businesses by local people and our guests share with us their journey to building successful businesses right here at home. In the Think Tech Studios today is Ashley Sasano, president of the Rotary Club of East Honolulu. Ashley, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm Kate. So, I'm a little biased because I'm a member of the Rotary Club of East Honolulu, but I think that it's really a great opportunity to talk about Rotary and what we do and of course how you decided that in addition to all the other things you do that you wanted to be president of the Rotary Club. Let's start with a little bit about Ashley. Here's something about yourself. I am a financial advisor so I help a lot of people with their retirement planning. Just making good sound financial decisions. I was born and raised here in Honolulu, Hawai'i, lived off Island for a little bit in Seattle and then came back a few years ago, started a family and just kind of fell into Rotary, I think, is what happened. Why did you get involved with Rotary? Truthfully, as I was starting out doing what I do as a financial advisor, one of my managers had said, hey, you need to join something. Get out there, network, meet people and I had absolutely no idea what I should do. I literally googled things to networking and opportunities in Hawai'i and somehow stumbled on Rotary. I had no idea what Rotary was about and I came across this website. I found that there were a lot of different clubs here on Oahu that met at different times and I picked one that looked like it would meet at a time that I could make it. That was basically how I found the Rotary Club of East Honolulu and that was almost five years ago. Wow, so there's a plethora of networking opportunities for business folks, BNI, there are other smaller networking groups. What stood out about Rotary for you? I think the thing that stood out about Rotary was that it felt like on top of networking I was able to really do something that was good for the community. I think a lot of people know that Rotary does a lot of community service. So we are in East Honolulu and we tend to do a lot of service projects that are related to education and really helping people out. So to me if I could network and meet other business professionals while also helping the community that was really a draw for me. Rotary originally supposed to be a business networking group? I think when it was founded that originally that was the original premise of it. It had been founded by, I want to say it was a group of men in Chicago that decided they wanted to be able to network and do business with each other and from there it grew, it not only grew nationally but internationally as well. Now, so the Rotary Club of East Honolulu is just one of many clubs but Rotary is actually, as you just mentioned, a little bit about Rotary International. How big does that go? Where does the scope go? It goes pretty big now. I want to say that there are like 1.1 million Rotarians around the world. So it's grown from just a small group in Chicago. In Hawaii we've got a few thousand members. I think the great thing about being a Rotarian is that it gives you access to not just the members that you have in your club but the members that you have throughout the district. So Hawaii is just under one district, district 5,000. But being part of the Rotary Club of East Honolulu, I can also go out and meet members from different clubs throughout the islands. I can go to the mainland, join a meeting that they have there in whatever city I'm visiting. Or if I'm traveling internationally, I can go out and join a club meeting there. We have a club member right now that's in Hong Kong and she's planning on visiting a club over there. So I think the scope of it really allows you to just expand your network if that's what you're looking to do. Not just locally here but also through the nationally and internationally. So I know that when you got involved with Rotary, I'm sure that it wasn't your intent to become president of the Rotary Club of East Honolulu. But tell me a little bit about what led you to that. I think one of the things you'll find about Rotary is that as you get more involved, you kind of get a sense of purpose. Like I'm doing something that's good. And for me, I think being young, one of the things that I wanted to really, I guess learn and really hone in my ability was my leadership skills. So as I started going through Rotary, I was asked to be a part of the board, which I think was great. And I was secretary for many years. I got to lead community service. But when I was asked if I could be president, at first I was like, God, I don't think I can do this. But I think just taking a leap of faith and knowing that I have great club members that support me and that can help me out, I think that's really what pushed me to say yes. And I mean, it's been a month. So far it's been pretty fun. It's been great. And I really think that the reason why I said yes to it was just to get that leadership experience that I think I was lacking in my business world. Now annually, Rotary has new visions. And so for this Rotary year, the vision of the organization is... Rotary connects the world. So when you were mentioning membership and whatnot, I think that Hawaii's very own Keisha King is a brand new member of your club. And so we can see where the reach goes pretty far and we connect people with other people around the world. And I think that it's an amazing opportunity. We would have never crossed paths if that were the case. So the training to be president of a Rotary club is not just a matter of putting a pin on your lapel now, is it? No, I mean, you do go through a good amount of training. I think what really helped was once the club sort of has an agreement on who's gonna be the next president, they sort of work with the current president. I guess get them used to the idea of being president and what the president does. The district has a lot of great training opportunities to just see the back ends of how Rotary works because a lot of club members only see the weekly meetings or the service projects. They don't necessarily see what goes on in the district as a whole. So the district does put on a lot of trainings. Before we even become president, we go through what's called pre-pets and then pets, which is president-elect training. And we all get to go to San Jose and do a full weekend of just training on being president. And it not only includes the presidents from District 5000 in Hawaii, but presidents from parts of California as well. So you do get a good amount of training for that. And I think that really made me feel a little bit more comfortable with the idea of actually leading the club this year. Tell me about some of the things that you folks do at pets. So at pets, we kind of learn about the different aspects of I guess Rotary, such as the Rotary Foundation, where we are raising money to do the local projects that we do plus the projects that we do around the world. We learn about things like membership and why it's important. And I think when you're just a member and you're not in the leadership role, it's not really things that you yourself. Think about, so I think pets kind of helps you really, like I guess get ideas on what you need to be thinking about as president. Rotary Foundation, what is that? The Rotary Foundation is actually one of the, and I just read this recently, but it is one of the top charitable organizations I think in the world. It's one of the most financially sound where most of the money that is raised goes directly to serving the community. So throughout the year, there's always different fundraising. There's ways for members to donate to the Rotary Foundation. People outside of Rotary can donate to the Rotary Foundation. The money that is donated goes to doing projects around the world, if things like water sanitation, sometimes helping out in communities that are hit by disasters. Sometimes it's just, I think last year we used some of our foundation money to help a school in a third world country that needed some help. I guess they were in disrepair, so we spent money there, and then some of the money will come back so that we can do some of our local projects here. I know that Rotary International has larger projects that they work on, and probably what Rotary is known best for. Share with us what that main project is. I think a lot of people know that Rotary is known for their constant, what is it, constant fight to end polio. So I think a lot of people in the older generations will remember how polio affected people, and I've seen a lot of videos of people where they're, I think it was called an iron lung, but basically once you, when you have polio, it sort of affects your ability to breathe, a lot of your limbs. So Rotary was one of the organizations that helped with getting the polio vaccination out across the globe. So at this point we've pretty much, and it's not just Rotary's efforts, a lot of people around the world have put in efforts to eradicate polio, but at this point there are only three countries left in the world that still see new cases of polio. So we're almost there, and our efforts are, we're gonna continue them until they, you know, polio's completely eradicated, but the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also matches all the donations that we make to end polio. That's awesome, that's amazing. So when you were training to become president of this fabulous Rotary Club, did they offer you background on how they get involved in international projects, how the reach goes? They do, they give a lot of information, and so I think one of the things that I took away as president was that there's so many different aspects of Rotary, so much that Rotary does that I really think that everybody can find something that they wanna do in Rotary. So there, you know, as you mentioned, all these different projects that happen globally. So we do have on our board, we have an international services director, and their role is to sort of look at what projects we have across the, you know, around the world and what we can help with. This year our district governor actually created his own international service project. So if anybody ever wants to do a community service overseas he's taking a week long trip to Bali doing three international service projects and Rotarians from Hawaii and Rotarians from around the world are invited to go and even if non-Rotarians wanna learn about it and join that's something that's there too. But I think the thing was I know that there's so many different parts of Rotary and I cannot be an expert at every single piece. So it's very helpful to me to have a supportive board that can help with those sort of things. Love to hear more about the Rotary Club of East Honolulu and the things that you have chartered for the club for this coming year. And of course more about Rotary and how business networking really does happen through Rotary. We're gonna go to a short break. This is Business in Hawaii. We'll see you back here shortly. Aloha, I'm Mellie James host of Let's Mana Up. Tuesdays every other Tuesday from 11 to 1130. This show is meant to dive into stories of local product entrepreneurs and how they're growing their companies from right here in Hawaii. I'm so thrilled to have our show kicked off and so please join us on Tuesdays at 11 o'clock as we talk to local entrepreneurs and hear their stories. Hey, Aloha everyone and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii Studio. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Pretty Matters Hawaii. We air here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Hawaii time trying to bring you issues about security that you may not know, issues that can protect your family, protect yourself, protect our community, protect our companies that folks we work with. Please join us and I hope you can maybe get a little different perspective on how to live a little safer. Aloha. Welcome back. I'm a business in Hawaii. With us today is Ashley Sasano, president of the Rotary Club of East Honolulu. Ashley, when we went to break, we were talking about the things that Rotary International does and the amazing work that they do throughout the world and they really do connect people who are Rotarians from states across the United States. They travel internationally to work on projects. Let's talk about the East Honolulu Club. I know that there are quite a few clubs in Hawaii. How do you pick? How do you pick which one to join? I think that no matter what you're looking for and what your time constraints are, there really is a Rotary Club that really suits everybody. For our Rotary Club, I mean, we're a pretty traditional club. We've been around for 60 years. In fact, we just celebrated our 60th anniversary this past May. Yeah, thank you. Well, thank you too, because you are one of our members. You'll find a Rotary Club that kind of fits everyone's schedule. We meet every Monday at lunch, so that's a more traditional type of setting in the Rotary World. There are clubs that are hybrid clubs, so they meet online, and then once a month, they'll meet in person. They're an E-Club, and we have this new thing that Rotary's doing. They're called Passport Clubs, and basically, you don't meet, for say, every week, but you can go and do service projects with other clubs that are doing service projects. So there's all types of clubs out there, I think, and I mean, even locally here, if you're thinking like, I like to, after work, go and have a couple drinks, and I want to have a couple people that are like-minded and have drinks with. We have a Paul Hanna Club, and say you want to be like getting up early, getting that kind of stuff done. First thing in the morning, we have breakfast clubs, so there really is, I think, something for everyone in Rotary. We were also talking about Rotary Foundation and how the money that the foundation raises goes to service projects. Some people who may make donations to Rotary Foundation may want their monies to stay local. Is that possible? So a lot of the, I guess, different clubs have different ways of doing things. The money that goes to the Rotary Foundation, eventually that comes back to us, and we do use that here locally. So I think people think that it's going internationally and it's only servicing these international projects, but the money does come back to us for use in our local project. In fact, I just had to do an application to use our district grant money for some local projects that we will be doing here. The other thing that we do is our club does a signature fundraiser every year. So if anyone wants to come, October 18th, we have our annual Sake Sushi event. This is our club's biggest fundraiser of the year. You get to taste a lot of different Sakes, of course, Great Sushi at Nansunoya Tea House, but the money that we raise locally at that event goes 100% to servicing our projects here with the Rotary Club of East Honolulu. So I know that there are Rotary Clubs in just about every district in the state. So when the Rotary Club of East Honolulu does a fundraiser and collects money for service projects, does it stay in East Honolulu? Is that the idea? The idea is for it to stay in East Honolulu, so a lot of our projects will service some of the schools in East Honolulu, in the Kameki area, Aina Haina area. The work that we do tends to stay centralized in the East Honolulu area. Sometimes we'll partner with other clubs that have projects in other areas of Oahu, but we do try to focus on East Honolulu for sure. So I definitely want to dispel some myth. When I was looking at Rotary or B&I or any type of business networking group, when Rotary came to mind, I automatically thought, it's for older people. I don't know if that's common. I don't know if that's common, but tell me about your membership and what that looks like. I think that Rotary has had that reputation for a number of years. I will say that I too had that sort of view because I didn't know that much about Rotary when I first joined. And when I went to a meeting, I realized that it really wasn't the case. So a lot of people do think it's a lot of not just older people, but older men. So for example, our club, I mean we're prime examples of the membership in our club right now, but I would say at this point, our club is about 60% women. So men, this is a lot of great women in our club. And a lot of us are professionals. We're business professionals. We are not in retirement age. What we do have some people that are in retirement age and they're with us because it's a great time for them to come and do some service projects and have something to do while they're retired. We also have, like you and me, we're kind of in the beginning parts of our careers and still building that. One of our newest members that we inducted this month, she's in her early 20s. So that's, I guess, myth of people being older and men is not entirely true at this point. We have such a diverse membership, I think it really is, I wanna say it's sort of the, it just goes to show how much our members are sharing Rotary because we've been able to attract people that are in their 20s. We have people in all different careers. So how does one become a member? Just come and check us out. If you know one of our members, ask them if you can come to a service project, a social event that we have, or a weekly meeting. A lot of our members have actually joined us because I think once a quarter we'll do a social event and it's really just hanging out, drinking wine, socializing and people like that aspect of just not having that business sort of environment all the time of the weekly meeting. So they like that and they've found that that's sort of fun with our club. So in building your membership, do you look at industry, industries represented across your membership so that you're ensuring that it's diverse or? In the past I think we've had a good diverse, I think that it's been a goal to look at certain industries like we need more CPAs, we need more lawyers kind of thing. I know a lot of B&I clubs will do that. At this point I think our main thing is we just wanna do something that's good in the community. So if we have people that have that sort of thought and they're all like-minded then it doesn't have to be we need to get more lawyers in, we need to get more CPAs. If you wanna do good in the community, come out and see what we're doing. One of the things that I love about our meetings is that we always have a guest speaker. Tell me a little bit about how you pick a speaker for your meeting. What are you looking for? A lot of times I think we look for organizations that are doing good things in the community as well because we are individuals that want to do good in the community, we wanna see what other people are doing. So the last speaker that we had was from Hawaii Fido and they raise and train service dogs that they can give to people free of charge, people that have disabilities and need a service dog. So having speakers like that really helps attract members to our meetings because it's very, I guess, it's fun to hear what other people are doing out there in the community. I'd love to get a flavor for some of the service projects that you folks do. We have a few photos here. Can we bring up the first one? Tell us about this project. So this was one that I actually planned last year on the fly. This was national cleanup day and we just went out there and we know that there's a lot of litter on our roads and we wanna make our community beautiful. So this is right here in Kaimaki and we went and we just picked up trash along the road. That was good times. Yeah, it was fun. Okay, let's go to the next one. So this is a project that I would say almost every Rotary Club does. This is our dictionary project. What we do is we go into, this is Palolo Elementary. We go and give every single third grader a dictionary. We'll go to the next one. This was at Jared Middle School. They needed to get some of their hallways repainted. A lot of times it's really difficult for the school to get it done because the students are in school. So we did this on a weekend and you'll see the little girl in the front is actually my three year old. She came out to help. So the good thing about our project is we invite our members to bring their family to come and help us out too. And what an experience for our young people to see that it's important to give back to our community. We've got a couple of more pictures. This one was at Kalani High School. We did some gardening. We actually built a path, a brick path. So this is where we're kind of leveling the ground before putting that path in. I think we have two more. And then we actually put up a pergola. We partnered with another group called Men's Leadership Hawaii. So while we were building that path, they were building this pergola which we will be planting lemon trees alongside. And our last one. This is one that we did last year on Rotary Gives Thanks Day which happens around Thanksgiving. We went to a senior home. So of course you can see that there's a lot of diverse types of projects that we do. We were able to spend a day with the seniors that live there reading to them, talking to them. And Dalen's two sons are right there in the picture. So again, it's a great opportunity to bring family members and show our young people the meaning of giving back to the community. And that's what I love about being a member of the Rotary Club of East Honolulu is that it does involve families. So it's not an individual endeavor. Ashley, we are almost out of time but I want to make sure that your viewers are able to know how they can get in touch with you or to join the Rotary Club of East Honolulu. If you'll tell us how to find you or where to go. Well, we meet every Monday at noon at Wildlife Country Club. We have a buffet lunch. So everyone's welcome to come out and check us out at our weekly meetings. You can also go to RotaryClubEastHonolulu.org. On there you can go to different, we have different sub pages that we'll talk about the different projects that we're doing. You can see a list of the speakers that we have coming. And you can, there's also a couple of buttons where you can click on to connect with us. And then of course the Rotary D5,000 is the RotaryD5,000.org is the overall district website. And that will give a... One more thing that's huge. That's huge for Rotary International. What's happening in 2020? Oh, I forgot to mention. So in 2020, we are gonna have a Rotary International Convention here in Honolulu, Hawaii. So this convention will bring people from all over the world. Usually these conventions are held once a year and in different countries. This past year, it was in Hamburg. Prior to that, it was in Toronto. I think in the future, we've got ones in Singapore. But in 2020, it will be in Honolulu, Hawaii. Fantastic. Then we're going to see a wave of Rotarians in Hawaii and that's really exciting. Ashley, thank you so much for joining us today. I think the work that you're doing for our community is just amazing. I wanna send a big thanks to the great production staff here in the studio. If you would like to be a guest on the show, please email your information. The shows at thinktechhawaii.com. Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at 2 p.m. And we look forward to seeing you here next week.