 Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. My books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game are about leadership, character, and creating a superior culture of excellence, which is what this show is all about. My special guest today is the meteorologist for KITV4, and she's a former Miss Hawaii. She is Malika Dudley, and today we are going Beyond Weather. Hey, Malika, welcome to the show. Hi, Rusty. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. You know, I haven't seen you for a while, and I got to say I miss you a lot, Malika. I miss you too. We've had such good times. But, you know, you've been so busy. I don't know how you do it all. I mean, you have so much on your plate, and you're so successful at everything. And I want to start at the beginning, Malika, if you can share about your background growing up in Hawaii. Sure. Yeah, I was born and raised on the island of Hawaii, so the big island. And I grew up in a small little plantation town back then. We still had sugarcane, so, you know, remember, like the big trucks on the road dropping, you know, red dirt onto the roadways. And yeah, so I grew up going to the Kalanina Ole Elementary School. And I went there from kindergarten through eighth grade. It was right down the street, so I would hear the bell ring at eight, and I would run. I would like sprint down the hill to make it in time before the 805 bell. I did fall once or twice. I'm a little clumsy, showed up bloody in class. But yeah, it was quite the experience. I was actually, like as far as school goes, I felt a little bit of, which is interesting in Hawaii, right? Because I have white skin. My mother has brown skin, but I have white skin. And so I was a bit of a minority at my school. My sister had brown skin. And so I always felt envious of her because she fit in a little bit better. And I always kind of felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. And I was really skinnies and people would tease me and call me chopsticks because my legs look like chopsticks. And, you know, so I had a little bit of adversity growing up in Papaiiko. But then I went on to Hilo High School and I had a great time there. And I really kind of found my crew, you know, my squad, my girls started surfing. And then I went to, and I was a valedictorian. I was one of six. So, you know, anyone that got over a 4.0 was a valedictorian. And that was probably one of the highlights of high school was giving, you know, giving my speech along with the other six. So we took the book, Oh, The Places You'll Go, and we each picked one page and then translated it to our lives. I lost my voice, of course, the day before. So I sounded like during my speech, which was awful. Completely lost my voice. Cran night. But yeah. And then I went on to college. I actually I tried to get into numerous schools. People, everyone thought I was going to go to an Ivy League school. So I applied to Stanford and, you know, all of these places. And I kept getting rejection letters. And it was a really humbling time, you know, especially because so much pressure was put on me that people expected me to to go to these schools. And I wasn't getting in. And so I applied at the last second to UH Manoa. And it was my guidance counselor that was like, you should always have a backup just in case. And while you're at it, apply for the regent scholarship. And so I applied for both on literally the day that it was due. And I actually got word back prior to my rejection letters that I had gotten into UH and that I'd gotten the regent scholarship. And I remember at the time kind of being like, oh, great. You know, let's wait for what I really want to do. And looking back, that was probably the best thing that ever happened to me was that this guidance counselor, you know, gave me the right advice. I got had a full ride to UH Manoa, where I went to college for four years, graduated then one year of my master's and then 16 years went by. And then I came back and I did two more years and finally got my master's. I just graduated actually in June. So my educational journey has kind of been like this. In the meantime, in the 16 year period, I also went to Mississippi State University. It was a fully distance learning program. And then we had one week in person where we had to go to Mississippi State at the end, like the culmination of the program. And that was to become a broadcast meteorologist, a certified one. Well, that's impressive that you got the regent scholarship and you're a valedictorian, Malika, and you have a beautiful family, Malika. And you and your husband, Kaimi, I mean, you guys are doing a phenomenal job with your kids. And what's the number one character trait that you really admire about Kaimi? Well, Kaimi is very giving. And he's very caring and he he listens. He's learning to listen. You ladies know what I'm talking about. But we're both learning to listen to each other. And I think because it's a lifelong journey, you know, we've been in a relationship for 10 years now and our relationship has gone through ups and downs and growth and setbacks and we've been through it all. And I truly appreciate and Kaimi, first of all, his perseverance that, you know, he's like not willing to give up. He's like, no, no, no, I'm going to try. I'm going to do better. I'm going to try harder, you know, and and I have that same kind of attitude. And so, yeah, you know, I mean, the things that he does around the house that show me he care, he's like my biggest cheerleader and supporter. And so we have equally distributed, you know, household chores, for example, like he's the dishwasher and I'm the laundry person, you know, I end up cleaning the entire house. That's like my thing because I, you know, I'm a little bit OCD. But when it warrants it like today, we're getting inspected by our manager of our home, you know, it was all hands on deck this entire weekend and he's willing to put everything down to to do what we need to do to, you know, achieve our goals. And I think those are great things for my children to also have to look up to. Oh, yeah, I totally agree with you. And Malika, I was so happy years ago when you won Miss Hawaii. And I want to ask you, why did you enter the Miss Hawaii pageant? Well, what's interesting is I was all of this was kind of random, right? So I was at some like fashion show at a hotel somewhere in Waikiki. And Justin Yoshino was there. And he was I think he was leading the fashion show or organizing it or something. And a bunch of the girls were what we call pageant girls. And so they had run in pageants before and were running in pageants. And he had already met with me and had me meet with Tracy Toguchi. Oh, no, that was after. So I met him there and then he was like, you know what? You should meet with Tracy Toguchi. She's a Miss Hawaii and you can find out about the Miss Hawaii program and decide whether or not it's a good fit for you. So at the fashion show, what I remember, though, is talking to some of the girls and some of the questions you got were a little strange. Like, oh, do you have a talent? You know, and like that's presumptuous. I don't know. Now I know, you know, because it's it's an entire part of the actually, it's the highest percentage of your score is talent. I don't know what it is now, but at the time it was 30 percent of your score. You know, so it was interesting to kind of get into learning about it in that way. Sat with Tracy and she told me about the scholarship side of it. And that's really what drew me to the Miss Hawaii pageant. The Miss America organization is the top provider of scholarships for women in the world, and I benefited from that. So just by running in the pageant, I got money for school and I was able. I had my full ride for my regent scholarship when I ran for Miss Hawaii. I was getting my master's degree and that money was starting. Well, actually, it did run out because it was just the first four years. And so Miss Hawaii is what got me through the parts of my master's program that I did initially. And then my entire broadcast meteorology program. So that's what drew me to the pageant itself. So when you were actually in the pageant, you know, that experience that you had, what did you learn about yourself throughout that pageant experience? Well, when I was in the fourth grade, I got this ribbon for perseverance. They had this character ribbons and everyone got a different one. I got perseverance and I think I just doubled down on that. So my first year, Olenna Hu, Olenna Rubin at the time, won. And I was fourth runner up and I got off stage and I immediately started planning for the next year. I had a little workbook. I sketched out like my swimsuit and my gown and wrote out all of the things that I was going to work on to to better my performance at the pageant. And so, yeah, I think maybe that was number one for Miss Hawaii at Miss America. What that taught me was just gosh, I will it inspired me because I got to meet a representative from every single state in the United States and Puerto Rico. And it was and the Virgin Islands want to leave that out. And that was amazing. I mean, they're my sisters now, you know, we still communicate. We still cheer each other on. And these are women that, you know, are doctors and lawyers and tech industry people, mothers. It just runs the gamut and they continue to inspire me to this day. And so the best thing that happened at Miss America was being named miscontiniality by my sisters. And to this day, it's still one of the most amazing moments in my life. Well, Malika, perseverance is definitely a necessary part of success. And it doesn't surprise me that you want miscontiniality. I mean, it's you have such a great personality and you have so much so much positive energy. And Malika, I felt I feel so fortunate to be able to have been a judge in five pageant so far. And what I what I've seen is there's a number of contestants that have insecurities and vulnerabilities about themselves. And they're entering the pageant because they want to they want to face those insecurities and actually have personal growth. So I admire them for their courage and want to get your thoughts about that. Well, first of all, thank you for saying that you're not surprised that I got miscontiniality, but I want to tell you a little bit of history on the Miss America pageant. So they actually discontinued miscontiniality because Miss Hawaii won it too much. And my year, they brought it back and Miss Hawaii won it. But you know what, Miss Hawaii's won it numerous times since. And it's just something about Hawaii. We have the Aloha spirit. We like to call miscontiniality Miss Aloha. And so I'm not sure it has so much to do with me specifically. I think it's more so to do with where we come from, the values and culture that's instilled in us from the very beginning. And maybe that's also one of the things that you're you know, you're talking about with the insecurities and there's reasons why women, you know, that we are always striving to do better, do more for our community, be better. And it's it's a package. It's a nice little package. No, I like hearing that, Malika. Yeah, it is it's so much of it is Hawaii and Aloha, for sure. And and shortly after you started working at KGMB, which we all know at right now, it's Hawaii News Now. But how valuable was that experience for you working at KGMB? Well, first of all, work hard and and just be open minded, because that's how I got my job. And I had no experience in the news industry, but I happened to tell my father one day on a long list of random ideas when I was a senior in high school. Oh, what do you want to do when you grow up? And I said, oh, maybe I'll want to fix cars. Maybe I could be a chef. Perhaps I could be on the news. And my dad happened to know Guy Hagi and Kim Janala and they had dinner one night. My dad happened to say that to them. And so I'm at a nightclub. Skyline, if you remember, I know you remember, Rusty. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And Guy Hagi drags me into this dark corner and I'm like, what's happening here? And he says we are starting a new morning show. And your dad told me that you're interested in being on TV. Maybe, you know, you could come in for an interview. And I think he meant more so like as an intern. But he introduced me to Chris Archer, who at the time was our news director. His wife was the head of marketing. I met her as well. I got their cards and the next day I'm sitting at my desk at L'Jardin Academy. I was a French elementary school French teacher at the time and loved my job. I developed curriculum for these kids and they were my kids. You know, I had 300 students that I would go in and be the, you know, the teacher that goes into the classroom. But this was intriguing. And so I emailed Chris Archer and said, hey, it was nice meeting you. You said to shoot you an email. So here I am. And he writes back very professionally. And he says, OK, yeah, why don't you come in for a read? And so he sends me these like AP news releases. And he says, OK, so write me a 30 second VO from this AP news release. And I write back, what is the AP? What's a VO about how long is 30 seconds? Could you give me an example? And this guy wrote back to me. He wrote back to me. I wrote a very poorly written voice over, which is what VO stands for. AP stands for the Associated Press. I'll never forget those. And I came in to read. And there's Keahi Tucker behind the desk. And I'm going, are they serious? I mean, totally starstruck. He's one of my best friends now. Just I love, I love the dude. He's amazing. And I sit down to this next to the stranger, basically at the time. And they put my VO into the teleprompter. And it was so wordy and just awful, right? So it was really hard to get through. And then they had breaking news, tsunami alert. And so this allowed me to kind of be myself. My dad's, I don't know if they knew it, but my dad's a tsunami expert. And so I was able to kind of riff about the tsunami. And then they were like, hey, why don't you try getting on the weather wall? And so I get on the weather wall and it's a green screen right behind you. And you have two monitors on either side and you have a monitor in front of you. And that monitor is flipped. And so I get up there and mind you, I didn't even watch television. I still don't watch television. I don't watch the news, but I'm on the news. Right. So I'm standing up there and Jeff Booth was the morning meteorologist at the time and he's sitting underneath the camera. And actually at the time, he was going through the broadcast meteorology program that I would then sign up for later. And I'm putting my hand out and I'm going, I'm mic'd by the way. And I'm going, Jeff, what's that? And he goes, clouds. Like, we have clouds. Walk, walk, walk, turn, Jeff. What's that? That's radar. It's rain. And there's some rain coming into the Coalaw mountain range, blah, blah, blah. Surf pops up and I'm a surfer. And so I can come alive for surf. And I think I talked about ankle slappers and, you know, choppy, whatever, you know, just use was myself. And I went through four interviews, like they brought me back four times. And I thought I didn't get the job, like for sure. And on my last one, Chris Archer says to me, Alika, you have this box full of overqualified people. And for some reason, keep coming back to you. I don't know if that was a compliment or not, but. They offered me the job and, you know, I mean, and the rest is history, I suppose, you know, I enrolled immediately in that BMP program and I trained. So they told me they would give me three months of training, which is unheard of in the industry. Usually they just throw you right on air. And so I shadowed Guy Hagi and Jeff Booth and they then during the between the newscast, they would record me and then they would critique me. And that was really interesting and definitely a learning process. I'm not sure I've ever it's hard to to get criticism. And I don't think at the time I understood the difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism, which is something that I'm really big on now and can definitely, you know, assess that and feel very grateful for constructive criticism and know how to shut out de-structive criticism. But at the time it was really hard as a 24 year old to take all of this on, you know. So it was quite the process. And I always tell kids when I tell them my story, just work hard, put your head down and be willing to learn and grow because that's what employers want. You don't have to have all the answers you can learn. No, I love hearing that, Malika. And now you're with KiTB4 and it seems like you guys have such a great team at KiTB with you, Mika, Rick. I mean, you guys seem to all get along so great. Now, what's the biggest thing you enjoy being at KiTB4 now? For sure, the people, the people are amazing. I mean, my weather team, first of all, to be on a weather team. Well, it's the largest weather team in Hawaii. We have four of us and three of us are meteorologists. And that's not a requirement to be a weather anchor. And so I think it really brings value to our audience that we have the training behind, you know, what we're the messenger, but it's nice to know that you're messenger that's bringing you with the National Weather Service says or what the National Hurricane says that that messenger has some background, you know, in weather to be able to draw from. And so that's been great. But on top of that, these people are just so kind and supportive. And I'm not even in studio. I mean, I'm live from here on Maui, from Upcountry Maui. And, you know, it's it's amazing. I feel so supported. My I've never had a boss, my GM, Jason, my news director, Janice, are so kind and understanding. And it's been it's been a really wonderful experience for me. I work part time. I do Good Morning Hawaii Weekends from six to eight a.m. It's the highest viewed morning show, even compared to the the weekday morning shows, which is such a blessing for for me to be a part of, you know, such a great show. But also I get to do it from my porch, from my backyard here on Maui. And that made history. I just feel so grateful to Janice and Jason for thinking outside of the box. Granted, COVID kind of helped them along this process because everyone was working from home and they thought, why not? Why hasn't anyone ever done this before? And so we made history. We've never had an anchor or a reporter ever be based on a neighbor island. And it looks like it's kind of a trend. I've seen other news stations now have reporters on the other island. So I'm hoping it just keeps going. Well, Malika, I enjoy watching you on, you know, doing your weathercast on your porch. And I want to ask you about this one thing, you know, in my books, I really talk about a welcoming adversity and looking forward to challenges and really having the right mindset when you in in dealing with challenges. What would you say is one of the biggest adversities you've dealt with in your life so far? Motherhood, hands down, mind you, I'm not sure if you heard in the background, my children giggling and running around about five minutes ago. I can hear it in my earphones, but this is live. So hey, you know, motherhood, because I feel like I'm still learning and growing myself. I'm still getting to know myself, yet I have them to guide and to lead and to be a role model for them. And so there's just this push and pull. And what I think I've realized is that that's the beauty of it. And growing up, I felt like my parents were perfect. And, you know, people always say practice makes perfect, but our motto is practice makes progress in my household. And so when mommy and daddy fail at something or we didn't quite get that right, or we raise our voices or whatever it is, we make that a part of the learning process, if you will, of becoming a human. You know, we're all human. We all make mistakes. And so when those things happen, we model how to move through when when we fail. Mommy and daddy are so sorry that we just raised our voices. We didn't want to do that. I want you to understand why that happened. And maybe we can all work together to move forward and and be better and do better, you know? And so we're trying also one of my main things I'm working on is trying to get them to build habits that will become habits and stick with them through adulthood. And, you know, hopefully through the teenage years, say they won't let it drop off, they'll keep going. But, you know, trying to meditate in the morning, trying to move our bodies in the morning, little the little things like drink a glass of water, be hydrated, you know? There yeah, there's just these little things that I tried to reading, you know, to incorporate into their little habits because I wish that they were habits that I had growing up because now it's hard. It is so hard. But on top of that, it's to go, it's OK. Like you don't have to do that every single day. You're not a failure. If you don't do your full morning routine, then you wake up at five and do the 20 minutes of that and the 20, you know, you're not a failure if you don't do this to the T, right? You are human. Just do your best in each moment. Sometimes our best doesn't look that great. But if it's your best in that moment and you're all good, move through it, move on. Good habits are key. And, Malika, you've interviewed a number of celebrities, including Michael B. Jordan and Adam Driver from Star Wars, the actual Kylo Ren. And how fun was it to interview those guys? So much fun. I've been so blessed to be a part of the Maui Film Festival as one of their regular reporters since, oh, my gosh, I mean, it's been at least 10 years because I remember interviewing Zach Efron many, many years ago when he had just done high school musical one, two and three. And so it's yeah, it's been such a blessing and so much fun. And they have, you know, these A-list celebrities come through. And so I think that year it was Adam Driver, Michael B. Jordan, maybe Laura Dern. You know, I've interviewed Viola Davis. I've interviewed Brian Cranston. I've yeah, it runs the gamut and so amazing. But they're just humans, you know, they're just like us and they've all been so kind and welcoming. And they're in and out. So to get like a sense of their personalities and feel so welcome just as a reporter is so nice. And Malika, you you have a communication podcast that's coming that's going to be starting soon. Can you can you tell me about that as well? Absolutely, I'm glad you asked. Well, this came from this. This is my thesis. It's 75 pages long, more than 20,000 words. I mean, I did hundreds of hours of research to develop this podcast. I'm a part of the Communicology Department at UH Manoa, which is the scientific study of human communication. I started at 16 years ago and came back. I thought I could finish my second year in, you know, in one year and it just wasn't possible with motherhood and everything else. And so giving myself the grace to kind of move through that and go, it's OK, I can add on another year. And so I did. And this last year has been this thesis inside and out. And so I did research on what makes a successful podcast, how to effectively communicate in a podcast. And the topic of the podcast is communication, which is a slang term that describes the beautification of communication, but also some people use communication to describe the unification of community. And I just thought both of those things are the goals of my podcast. I want to help people to communicate better. And I want to bring them academic information in a way that they can digest. And that's what I've been doing for the last 15 years, being a messenger on the news is very similar to the whole concept of this podcast is to take something that's a little bit complicated like a hurricane. You know, but this is human communication. And to be able to bring it to a layman, if you will, to a normal everyday person so they can understand the content, they can get the latest research and they can apply that to their lives. So I interview researchers on deception, on the positivity bias, that's our inclination to always put forward our best selves. Cyber bullying, gosh, I've done so many apologies. And I have them all in the queue. We're going to be launching this month. So I'm really excited in two weeks. I'm going to put it out and wait till Apple accepts it. And then I'll launch it once Apple accepts it. So there's no actual date. If you want to follow along, though, you can follow me on Instagram. Either at Malika deadly and there's a link there to the communication podcast or communication podcast, there's just an extra F either in the middle of the word. But it's really exciting. And then I have guests come on that have listened to the researcher podcast and we just talk authentic stories. You know, so, for example, my my topic for my thesis was parental fubbing. And fubbing is phone snubbing. So it's when parents ignore their children in the presence of their phone. And so we went through all the research on how that's impacting our children, what we can do to better move through this. And and then I had my guest come in and we talked about the actual struggle and what we actually do, what works, what doesn't. So it's I don't know, I'm just so passionate about it. I know you can tell. Malika, I know you're passionate about so many things. And I could have you on for an hour. I mean, we could just keep going. But I also want to mention before we wrap that that you're also a black belt in karate and you are CPR certified and that you you go around the state of Hawaii doing CPR classes on a volunteer basis. And and I just feel that that is so impressive, Malika. And I, you know, all of the things that you mentioned on the show today, your insights, I mean, I just really want to thank you for for taking time to join me on the show today. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Malika. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com. And my books are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I hope that Malika and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.