 This is Think Tech Hawaii, the immunity matters here. Okay, we're back for the two o'clock block. I'm here with Coralie Matayoshi, who is the CEO of the American Red Cross Pacific Island region, and we're here to talk about the American Red Cross here on making leadership work. Thanks for coming down, Coralie. Thank you, glad to be here. So it seems to me the American Red Cross has always been an important part of the nation, sort of a moral backbone, if you will, of the nation, and of protecting us and making us feel that we are protected, both of those things, yeah. And it's been important in Hawaii, too. It's been here a hundred years, and you're celebrating your centennial, aren't you? Yes, we are, and we have such a rich history. Queen Elio Kalani sowed us a flag that's sort above Yolani Palace during World War I, while Red Cross volunteers rolled bandages in the throne room of Yolani Palace, and we re-enacted a scene from a hundred years ago when we had a replica of that flag fly above Yolani Palace just a couple of weeks ago, and it was so neat, it had the Royal Hawaiian Ban and the guard, the royal guard, and it was just such a neat, proud moment for us to think that Queen Elio Kalani laid the foundation, and that all of the volunteers thereafter are laying the foundation for future generations. Well, since 1917, before, you've always had a warm relationship with the kingdom, the people. Yes, we have. And you still do, and you're an important part of Hawaii, and one of the reasons, I think, is that we realize, we should realize that we're isolated, we're a long way from the mainland, and you're, in many ways, the first responder when things go wrong, yeah. Yes, we are, and most people don't realize that we are the most isolated population on the face of the earth. You think, I'm in charge of Saipan and Guam, and I thought that's kind of far away, but there's Tokyo right there, right? So we are a sitting duck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and people don't realize that it's gonna take far longer for us to get help. People take solace that there's a military and everything, but when you're on an island, and the airports and the harbors are out, you need to be prepared, and so just this hurricane season, or this hurricane season, the Department of Emergency Management increased the number of days that you need to be prepared from seven to 14 days, and that's minimum for your food, your water, your medication, and all the things you need to survive. Why? Why did they increase the number of days? Because they saw what happened in other places, and they know that we're on island, and when the food and water and everything stops coming, that's it. If you don't have your medications, sorry. Yeah, what I was getting at, too, though, is that we live in a time of climate change. Yes, we do. Storms are becoming more extreme. They will be more extreme yet, and the more extreme the storm, the better prepared you need to be. Yes, and before we didn't have to worry about things like terrorist attacks, we're worried about North Korea right now, right? We have people in Las Vegas volunteers right now, and you never know what's gonna happen, so we have to be prepared, and especially in Hawaii. And part of being with the American Red Cross is that there are many chapters across the country, and that they cooperate with each other in times of emergency, in times of heat. Can you talk about how that works? Yes, actually, we used to have 2,000 chapters, and they started to consolidate that. So now we have about 60 regions that are a little larger, and we have to help each other because we're gonna be victims, or somebody else is gonna be victims, not only to coordinate all of the relief items and the people and all of that, but just to help each other raise money even. So right now we raised a whole bunch for Harvey and Irma and Maria, and just last night, Sunday night, we have a whole bunch of wildfires that 60,000 people don't have electricity, 1,500 people lost their homes. We're mobilizing for that, and we're trying to raise money for that. Isn't my imagination that we have more emergencies, more disasters these days, more things you have to respond to? Yes, we do. Even the time that I've been here for 14 years, I remember that I went to Katrina, and that was the worst. And then there's Sandy, and there's all these other things, and we've been having hurricane after hurricane. And it's this time it's the East Coast. Remember last year, it was Tropical Storm Darby, and then Madeleine and Lester? That was our turn, and it was awfully scary. We were just lucky to dodge the bullet. Yeah, yeah. Just as we help them, they will help us, right? Yes, they will. One of these days, I was telling you, every morning I'll wake up and trade winds, beautiful weather and not a cloud in the sky. It's one day closer. That is true. And if that happens, it strikes me that the federal, the FEMA authorities may be able to do something, but so will the Red Cross from other states be able to do something to help us. Yes, and actually we're written into the national response plan and the county and the state plans. We are in charge of opening shelters. We're the only ones. And somebody once asked me when I first got on board, what would we do without the Red Cross? And I thought, oh, trick question. You know what? You'd have to have another one because we're the only ones. And it's not only these big disasters, it's all the little ones. In fact, every eight minutes, the Red Cross responds to disasters, primarily house fires, and in Hawaii it's every four days. We're on call 24-7, 365 days, and we respond within two hours of any disaster, any time, any place. Yeah, I wanna talk about the scope of what you do. People may tend to think it's smaller than it really is, but okay, so obviously if there's a bad storm and houses and infrastructure are being destroyed, you're there. If there's a fire, such as Marco Polo, or the house fires you talked about, there's quite a few of those. Correct. You're there to help people. Right. And to make shelters for them, to give them sucker and solace, so to speak. And if there's a terrorism or some kind of school attack, God forbid, some kind of Las Vegas attack in any crowd that's at risk now, you're there. Disease, some kind of outbreak, and that's always possible because we are an intersection of vectors right here, and we may or may not have the capability to deal with, medically deal with a given outbreak, you're there. So then I finish, is there more? There must be more, yeah? Actually, that's only a small part of it. That's response. And then there's the preparation aspect. We teach school children how to prepare for disasters. This is the Disney Pillow Case Project. It emanated from Hurricane Katrina, which I went to. And they noticed that college students were fleeing their dorm rooms with their belongings in their pillowcases, so they worked for their art therapist, and this is designed for kids through third grade to fifth grade. Yeah, actually this is a disaster kid for the kid afterwards. The roadmap. It is, it makes people think, and it not only tells them what to bring, but also it teaches them how to cope because if a kid is freaking out, then the parents will too. And you know, parents, kids are the ones that tell parents to recycle, don't smoke, you know, all of that stuff. So if we can get to the kids, then we'll make some progress there. Because the kids have influence on their parents. They do. So that's just disaster though. There's three things that the Red Cross does besides the disaster. We teach people how to save lives through CPR first aid. I want you to know, full disclosure, I am a Red Cross water safety instructor. You are! Right next to you, right next to your table. Wow! I'm impressed, Jay. But we do that, and then we do so much for the military. It's a best kept secret. We are at all the military bases. We run the entire volunteer program at Tripler Army Medical Center, and my favorite program in the whole world is our human animal bond program. We have about 20 dogs that are therapy dogs, and they visit the soldiers in bed, and they just bring so much comfort and joy to PTSD people, and it's just so great to have these dogs. Yeah, well, there must be a huge amount of gratification in doing what you do. You know, because you're saving lives, you're making lives better when they are at risk. You're giving people comfort when they need comfort. It's just a great thing. It is, it is. And sometimes I feel like it's a little attenuated. You know, I'm the one that's raising money and awareness and all that. But when I went to Katrina, I was down and dirty, and I learned a lot when I was there. Sure, that's another reason why it's good to have this kind of cross-assistance around the country. Because you go to one disaster area, you learn, and maybe you use that for your own area, necessarily. In fact, all of the people that we deploy, there are 68 people that we deploy just for these hurricanes that just happened. When they come back, they are better for Hawaii because they have the experience. You can, it's like being in a war. You can train all you want, but if you haven't been in the war zone, you don't know. And so when I went to Katrina, it was good for the state of Hawaii because my eyes were wide open. I saw those military, you know, just all of the carnage. And it made me think, I better, we better be prepared. She hadn't seen that before. Yeah, I haven't. Luckily, you know, since, well, in Ike, we haven't had anything really bad here. Yeah, but it's... But we're due for something. We are certainly due. Everybody says knock on wood. Yeah. So one of the things, before we leave the children, I wanted to ask you to explain the map of your house technique. I think it's really important. Yes, so we have a home fire campaign that teaches people how to prepare to escape from home fires and also how to prevent them. But so this is a grid, a floor plan, that we draw every room in the house and we sit at the kitchen table with you and we plan out an escape route, two escape routes, from every room in the house. So that when you, then there's a little magnet. It's graph paper. So you draw square rooms. You can go straight. But you can also then put it on the refrigerator and you can say, this is Jay's room. So the kid thinks, oh, that's how I escaped. So if the door is hot, I got to go through the window and I'm on the second floor. So here's the rope or how to break the glass. You had to think about that before because it happens in the middle of the night. Yeah, yeah. And you have two minutes to get out of your house. Yeah, or we are going to be burned. Right. So part of the... You told me a story about it. Yeah. A fellow who went back for his children. Right. Because he thought, tell me the story. It happened pretty recently. A father went back to look for his children and had they had a plan on where to meet if something happens like near the tree or near the mailbox, then he would have seen them there because they had escaped and he went back for nothing and he died. So that's the thing is we need to do that. And the biggest part about this smoke alarm installation is installing smoke alarms themselves because they cut the rate of death in half. And seven people in America die every single day from a house fire. Yeah. I want to talk about smoke alarms for a minute because it's an issue with the Marco Polo. Yes. And there was, I don't know what happened to it, there was a bill in the city council calling for installation of smoke alarms in every, well in every high rise, I guess every multiple family unit in the state or in the city and the average cost of a condo per owner would be like $25,000, $30,000. I think it was for sprinklers. Sprinklers, sorry. Sprinklers. Sprinklers. And the question is really is that, is that possible politically and economically? And what else can we do? What else can you train people to do so that their house, they will be warned when their house is at risk? Right. I think a smoke alarm is the best line of defense. At least you know. Nobody's going to be able to prevent it although we do teach people what not to do. You know, don't leave things unattended. Yeah, sure. But when you're in a condo, you're depending on your neighbor to be safe, right? So something's going to happen but at least you are able to get out if you have the warning. And as I said, you have two minutes to get out of your house before it burns to the ground and that's a little scary. Yeah, but if you had a smoke alarm or, you know, a smoke alarm is going to find the smoke. It's got sensors. I think they're pretty high tech these days. Once it finds a dangerous level of smoke, it's going to warn you. It's going to make noise. It's going to be flashing if you can't hear very well. It's going to tell you that you've got to do something. This is critical in saving your life. It is. It's got to communicate with you. Right, and I don't know why people don't have smoke alarms. That's what's going to save your life. That's going to give you the extra minutes to get out. Yeah, yeah. We live in a more complex world all the time and Red Cross, you know, contacts is in touch with all of those complexities. You have to keep up. You have to build an organization that is resilient, that knows the technology, that is intelligent and at the same time caring. This is not easy. And the subject of our show really, bottom line, Coralie is leadership, how you lead an organization like that. We come back from this break. I'll be asking you about that's Coralie Maniochi, American Red Cross Hawaii chapter. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I'm a firefighter. A teacher. I'm a farmer. I'm a barber. A waitress. A mom. We're all part of your community. Every day we move in and out of each other's busy lives. It's easy to take for granted all the little moments that make up our everyday. Some are good, others not so much. But that's life. It's when you experience a moment of uncertainty, something or someone's behavior that doesn't seem quite right. These are the moments to take a pause. Because if something doesn't feel right, it's probably not. It's not about paranoia or being afraid. It's about standing up and protecting our communities. One detail at a time. Because a lot of little details can become a pattern. We. We. We. We trust our instincts. Just like you should. Because only you know what's not supposed to be in your everyday. So protect your everyday. If you see something suspicious, say something to local authorities. Okay, we're back. We're live and we have the honor of Coralie Maniochi. She's the CEO of American Red Cross, a Pacific Islands chapter. Which is a very, what do you call it, resilient, innovative, and independent. So self-reliant organization has to be because of where we are. And this is not an easy job. She's been there 14 years now. When she's learned the ropes, she's learned about how you make an organization with 95% volunteers, 5% staff, work in such a large area with so many risks. Risks that we haven't even seen how serious those risks are, but we will. So my question is, you know, leadership, making leadership work. How do you, how do you do that? So that you get, you hold it all together, you fund it, you staff it, and you, you know, you reach out into the community and make it, how do you do that? You know, when I first got on board, we were broke. And people didn't feel to Red Cross are granted. Of course the Red Cross is gonna be there. Aren't they funded by government? No. Don't they get help from the national? No, not unless there's a big disaster like Eniki, right? So people didn't know about the Red Cross. And so we had to, I had a $200,000 deficit and didn't know what to do. So I started educating the public. Welcome to the job. Yes, yes, that's what they never tell you that in the interview. So glad you took the job. Actually they had just let go a quarter of their staff as well. And they didn't tell me anyway. So I didn't wanna let any other people go. So I knew that we had to raise the funds, right? So we made up this thing, kind of like the food bank with the Nets. We went out with first responders who are, that's who we work with, military, all of those people. Everybody likes first responders. Yeah, and we work with the military and the police and the fire every day. And so they appreciate us, right? So we were out there with hats. And it was kind of taking your hat off to the Red Cross to, and giving us money. And that made people realize, wow, they do need money. Because the Red Cross was so used to getting, before it was community chess and then there was United Way and every time there's a disaster, people come step up to the plate. But we need it for regular operations. You need the money beforehand to have the cuts and to have the volunteers train and the gas and everything. You have to have the infrastructure and people didn't realize that. So that made people realize, yes, we do need money. And then I went after the corporations because not too many people were giving. There were about three companies in the state of Hawaii that were giving Red Cross $5,000 or more. The rest weren't because they weren't being asked and they didn't realize that we needed the money. So we did that about nine years ago. Right now we have 80 companies giving us about over $850,000. And then we don't have any dinners or anything except for this last, this is our centennial year we had one in 14 years. We don't have any. That's great. And all the money goes to mission. And all the time goes to mission to instead of arranging dinners. Yes, yes, all of that. I remember we used to have a thing at Tamra in part. And that was the beginning of the 40 days of rain with the colloquial damburst. I remember. We had our emergency response vehicle, all of our disaster people cooking hamburgers and things. And then the rain started coming down. They had to disperse, they needed to go. They had to do their work. And so we can't use our volunteers for that. We need to have them fulfill our mission. So now you're a lawyer, yeah? Yes, I am. How does that, and you had experience as a lawyer so you know the community, how does that help you? Have the legal training, legal practice, how does that help you do the CEO of American Red Cross? It really does help. And you never know what life is gonna bring, right? I never thought I'd be the CEO of the American Red Cross, right? But the power of persuasion and just the passion of knowing that you're helping people, I think people always say, wow, I didn't know that. And I live the mission. I really live and breathe it. It's a great mission. It's a community thing in the total sense, yeah. It is. And you have to talk to the community. And being a lawyer helps you do that, I'm sure. Yes, it does. And in front of the camera, I've learned not to be shy in front of the camera. And that's something, you know, if you go to court, go to court. Yeah, right, of course. You know, you're gonna be facing the cameras at any time there's a disaster in which the media is interested, right? Yes. And you're the face of helping people, you're the face of the American Red Cross, you're the face of those who coordinate among the first responders. Yes, but you know, when I first got there, the Red Cross did not even issue pressure releases. They were, a lot of the volunteers were shy. Oh, we don't want the cameras, everything. I'm like, put the vest on and show me the camera because people don't know, right? So they used to send the press release a week after that said, oh, you remember a week ago there was this fire? I don't remember. This is what we did. I have them at two o'clock in the morning, send out press releases, we're on our way, we get there, we're there. And then what we did right after that because if people don't know, then they're not gonna give. Yeah, well, and also people want to know. I mean, the thing is, we as a community need to know where the problems are, what's happening. It may affect us the next time. And of course it puts you in the right place because you are there and you might as well tell us what's happening. You're situated, you were perfectly situated. Which brings me to the point about, if you're the CEO, you have to maintain this organization. So give us the parameters of the organization. 5% staff, 95% volunteers. How do you select your staff? How do you train your staff? What do you do with the volunteers? How do you find them? How do you select them? How do you train them? You know, we're being a little bit more strategic about selecting the volunteers. Before, especially when there's a disaster, everybody wants to go to Puerto Rico, right? No, you can't, you have to be trained and you have to be real life training here first and then do that. But so now we're trying to be more strategic in actually thinking about what kinds of needs we have and then recruiting to fill them. We'll still take a lot of people to do things like installing smoke alarms. But we're looking for people that can do IT or accounting and things like that. We need all that. We need every single type of person. Yeah. So how do you get them? You put an ad to paper, pass, you know, by word of mouth, Craigslist. All of the above. But actually, you know, like we always need nurses, right? So we go and we go to the nursing school. In fact, the nursing school is helping us do smoke alarms and they're helping us do this Disney pillowcase project because it's teaching and it helps people to be able to present. You know, even an engineer has to be able to present. So it teaches you. It's hard for them. I won't know comment. Yeah, so you have to train them so they can train others. So there's got to be a lot of training among the volunteers and the staff for that matter. How do you do that? There is a lot of training and before it used to be hours and hours. It still is hours and hours and hours but we've gotten a little smarter, a lot of it's online. And it has to be standard because everybody has to be, especially disasters, they have to be trained in the exact same manner. You have to know the forms. You have to know the protocol because then you can get dropped into Louisiana or Alabama and you'll know what to do. And everybody has a role. In fact, you have to work your way up. You get evaluated like an employee. You get treated just like an employee because they are that important. Yeah, and I suppose I'm guessing here but there are levels of authority. Yes, there is. You have managers. You do supervisors, all that stuff. Everybody knows the pecking order and you have to get a good evaluation and then you do more training and more experience and then the next time you can do bigger things. So what's your ideal volunteer? What is this person like? Give me a profile. Somebody that's really flexible, that really cares because that will show when you're sitting face to face with a victim they know whether you care or not. Yeah, that's the image of the Red Cross. It always was, yeah. We care. We care about you. Mono, imano. Right, and so I think we attract those kinds of people because they really do care and that is worth so much more than replacing somebody's food or clothing or whatever. It's that hug. It's that listening because people's whole life just went up in smoke. You have a plan where you can call the volunteers up from wherever they are in a case of, say an island-wide disaster or statewide disaster where you can somehow communicate with them and they will know where to report and what to bring and all that. We do that all the time. In fact, last hurricane season was our turn on this side. Remember we had Darby, we had Madeline, we had Lester? Every single weekend we'd look at the weather and think, oh no, do we have to work this weekend? Because every single time we called hundreds of people up to be on standby, we moved equipment. When we thought it was going to another island, we moved equipment. We're on call 24-7 for any disaster. And they gotta be quick. Yes, they have to be quick. How many are there in numbers? There's about 3,000 Red Cross volunteers. There's about maybe 800 that are just regular on call and all of that. So you have a Rolodex and a way to reach them. But hey, we email. I hope it's not just a Rolodex. Social media. We do, we have. Telephone, all the above. All the above, texting, everything. Yeah, that's fabulous. And actually they go and put their little schedules online, it's a little more technologically savvy before it was pieces of paper, right? And so they put their availability and if they're going to be on vacation, no, I'm not going to be a disaster action team member this 24-hour period. But it's all there and we respond within two hours of any disaster, anytime, anywhere. A call from the first responder goes to a hotline. The hotline people then deploy a disaster action team that's on call at that time, whether it's Lenai or Y&I. And they get deployed within two hours at any place. Well, if you're on this island on Oahu, you can get in your car and go, but how about the neighbor islands when you have to get a plane? Use commercial? Yes, we do, but you need to be, they might get cut off, right? So every island has disaster action team in every location. Yeah, I got it. You gotta have that. Now you spoke before and I wasn't focusing on this, but you mentioned that with your budget you have accumulated inventory of equipment, supplies, food, who knows what. What kind of inventory do you have? I assume you have this in various places around the islands, but I'm just thinking it must be down at your Red Cross headquarters there in Diamond Head area. We do. Tell us what you have. We also have a tunnel in Diamond Head. It looks like the Flintstones, you know, those kinds of really long caves where if the lights went off you'd be scared. So we have a tunnel in Diamond Head for a lot of the bigger items like cods and blankets and water and things. And then we have a cache of items all over in different areas of the state as well. Yeah, gotta have that. No, you gotta deliver that to people. Yes. So as the lady in the red suit, if you will, who wears the Red Cross brandy and all that, the CEO of such an organization, what kind of image do you wanna present to your volunteers and to your staff and for that matter to the public? How do you see yourself as sort of an all-encompassing leader of this really critical community effort? What do you wanna project to them? I think it's an air of confidence that we do know what we're doing, but at the same time we need your help because Red Cross is not just an entity that's up in the sky. It's communities and communities have to build resiliency because if you get cut off in Kailua or Hanna or whatever, you have to survive on your own. So it's not only preparing with your disaster kits and things, but learning First Aid or CPR. What if something happened right now? What would you do? And I wanted to mention the apps that we have because that is something that's really important. A lot of people have apps, other entities have apps about what to do in a hurricane or whatever, but we have First Aid for humans and also First Aid for pets. Important. And it's free. It is very important. If your dog got hit by a car, it would tell you what to do or if it ate chocolate, what's kind of a sign? So even have a GPS enabled capability of finding something, place that's open in case you have to take the pet to an emergency. So how can I get the app? You can go online at the Red Cross or you can go to your Apple or the droid, the Play Store. Yeah, and download it. So it was called American Red Cross. Actually, they used to have something for floods, hurricanes, all that, and then they just joined it all in about two years ago. They put it into an emergency app. It's an exclamation point and it has everything you need. And it's got your logo on it. It does. Yeah. What about the website? What's your website? It's redcross.org slash Hawaii. And you can go on there. You can find out volunteer opportunities and how to prepare, all kinds of things. Even our history, our whole history is there. Well, I think the Red Cross has a special image here in Hawaii. And I think I know the answer to the question I'm not gonna ask. I hope I know the answer. I hope so too, but I know you do. And that is, how would you like the people of this state, of this community to see you, how would you like them to think of the Red Cross? What role do you want them to see that it plays in their lives? I think it's a role that we got it. We know what we're doing, but that we need their help and that they need to be a part of it, not only to volunteer and prepare themselves, but also to donate. It's like a blank check. It's a bad business model, I see, because we have to respond. We were required by Congress to respond to every disaster that happened in the United States, which is 70,000 a year or one every eight minutes. But we don't get funding from the federal or state government. Unfunded liability. Unfunded liability. It truly is. And people don't understand that. And we need to raise the money to help our own community, because it's only when there's a huge iniquity that national will come in because we'll be the victims. But other than that, we are on our own. And you know what? I feel a little better when we talk with you. Oh. Holy Monayoshi, CEO of the American Red Cross Pacific Islands region. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. A little hot. Thanks. Thanks, Jay.