 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. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about leadership, character, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is the highly respected leader and general manager of Hawaii News Now. She is Katie Pikman, and today we are going Beyond the News. Hi, Katie, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Aloha, Rusty. Thank you so much for letting me be one of your guests today. I have so much enjoyed watching your show, and I just feel very lucky to be here today with you. Oh, thank you, Katie, and you've been making such a great positive impact in our community, and I want to first ask you if you can share a bit about your background. Absolutely. Well, if we go way back, I was born in a suburb of Chicago. It's called Oak Park, and that was definitely very, very formative to who I am now. It was a town that was going through a lot of change and really focused on what it looks like to integrate as the towns in Chicago were experiencing a lot of racial change very quickly as different families of color were moving into white neighborhoods. So I was very fortunate to be part of a group of committed individuals to creating a diversified village, and then being right next to Chicago, there was so much happening, and it definitely impacted the start of my career. But really, what I always imagined I would be Rusty was a movie director. From the very beginning of my upbringing in Oak Park, I had actually written a screenplay about our town and all of the changes that had gone through. And so I was drawn to the TV industry because I thought, wow, that's probably the best way that I could get into this artistic screen-based career. And so I started my TV career back in 2000 and had just made a move to Rhode Island. So I joined WPRI, which was a CBS affiliate and WNAC, a Fox affiliate. And I was in the marketing production side of the business because I wanted to be a movie director. So I was writing commercials. I was writing marketing promos. And I actually remember one of my favorite memories was I really wanted to learn how to edit and how to actually make this content that I had written and bring it to life. And so I ended up learning that the avid editor we had on staff was going to quit the next day. So I paid him $75 to teach me how to edit over the weekend. And boy, my next week was editing commercials for our largest client that the station had. So it was it was a great opportunity to learn quickly. But really with that focus of becoming an editor and being in the production and a marketing side of the business, I was able to build just beautifully strong relationships with a lot of our local clients because we were sitting in an edit suite for hours together and inevitably you start talking about life and what's important to them. And I really learned that being able to listen to that, learn their stories and then tell their stories through the writing and the content creation that it was really powerful for them. So over time with building those relationships, the sales leaders saw that that was kind of a unique talent and drew me into the sales side of the business. So I actually I joined right in 2001, I want to say a week before September 11th. So it was absolutely an incredible time to be joining the sales side of the business. Actually as everything was canceling and finding really new ways to message for these important community partners in a time that was just so incredibly unprecedented and so serious. But I did that for six years. For six years, I took my my talents into the sales world and what really helped me was having that background with telling stories, creating content for people and then using it to be able to make their marketing campaigns really strong for them. And then I got the opportunity in 2008. Again, another really monumental time in our history as the financial crisis was happening to go into sales leadership. And just loved the ability to work with all of these salespeople to basically diversify their skills. And and instead of just being sales focused and money focused, talk about how do you connect with those clients and how do you learn their stories and really be meaningful in supporting the marketing efforts. And then after doing that until 2014, I got a great opportunity to move to Hawaii to join another station in our family of stations as the director of sales. And that led me to move to this this place that I am so so proud to call home with my husband and two little boys. Well, Katie, I I still believe there's a lot of time for you to become a movie director still. Yes, I I see that too. Every once in a while when I'm watching credits, and I haven't been to a movie theater in a long time, but I just imagined my name rolling up in the in the director credit. So thank you for that belief in me, Rusty. Now, Katie, I know that you work closely with the previous general manager, Rick Blangiardi, who's our current mayor, as we all know. And what what do you say? I mean, why was he a successful leader for Hawaii News Now? Well, so many reasons. And I'll be very open. I loved working for Rick Blangiardi. First, as so many of us have experienced, if you get to be in close contact with him, he has amazing energy, and it's the kind of energy that you feel when you walk into a room with him, and it's really positive. And it feels good to be in that type of energy. One of the things that I think has made his leadership so powerful is that when you are with him, he really gives you his attention. So you feel seen and you you get time with him. And he has great, great confidence in himself, but he also is very generous with sharing that confidence in you and what he believes you can do. And frankly, it makes you want to work harder. So, you know, you're already he's very good at surrounding himself with people who are at the top of their field and doing their best work, but then has this wonderful additional skill of inspiring you to do even better than you'd ever done before. So, I mean, you know better than anyone. He's a coach. And those coaching skills that he brought from being a football coach for years really have they're very effective in a business atmosphere, especially in a TV station like this, where really the work can be. You can feel like you're in a grind sometimes. And each year you start over and you're like, OK, here we go again. But what I loved about it, when I was his director of sales, we would get to a point where we might have done so well for the month. And he would look at us and look at all our success. And he's like, well, is that it? Are you going to take a knee? And you would just say, OK, let's see what else we can do. But he definitely inspired you to just keep working towards your absolute best. Oh, I totally agree. Mayor Rick is is fantastic. And Katie, how would you describe your leadership style? Well, I think in your books, talk a lot about this, but it's ever evolving. I'm really always trying to look closely at myself and the choices that I'm making and evaluate that work. Could I do better? What would I do different next time? And just make sure that I'm learning constantly. I definitely am a consumer of all sorts of leadership materials and great books like yours to leadership podcasts. But I really like to think of myself as having a collaborative leadership style until I became the general manager of what you use now. I was in the sales field for a very long time. And frankly, that was something I knew very well. So I would be in a zone and part of my leadership style then was work ethic. I always knew that I would work as hard or harder than everyone around me. And and, you know, and basically lead by example, by always working so hard. Well, now that I'm the general manager and truly don't have a background in the very diverse departments of our station from engineering to marketing to news to sales to the business office. I've really had to learn how to lean on the leaders around me and collaborate with them with coming together with a common mission and goals. But figuring out how I can work with them so they can lead their teams with their special expertise in each one of those those areas. I also on one of the things I noticed from Rick's style and I loved was he'd always say, get me to yes, you know, you bring me an idea. Give me the rationale to get me to say yes to your idea. Well, I would describe myself more as I'm already at yes, because I just love to honor people's ideas and work to try to make them happen. And then the next phase is really figuring out how do we stay at yes because there is definitely investigation and things we have to do to make sure we're we're focusing our resources and efforts on the right things. But more than anything, I would say I am always focused on prosperity. I really believe that you'll rarely hear the words impossible come out of my mind or my mouth. And it's just because I believe in anything is possible. And I really believe in the people that I get to be surrounded by here at Hawaii News Now. So I like to focus on what we can do. I like hearing your insights, Katie, and your Hawaii News Now Sunrise Team continues to be the number one show, morning show. And why what do you think are the reasons why for that? Well, that's actually the easiest question you've asked me. That is all team, team, team and a heap of phenomenal chemistry. So from the behind the scenes people of Sunrise, you have the absolute best in the business producers, technical media producers, photographers, editors, just people behind the scenes, putting that four and a half hour Monday through Friday news program together. And then you have the most incredible on your team. And you have Grace and Steve, Guy and Lacy, Billy V. Howard. You have Casey out there reporting and you really couldn't ask for better chemistry, talent and truly authentic relationships. One of the things that I hear all the time is that, wow, they really seem like they like each other. Well, what's great is that they really do. And sometimes I guess you can fake that. But in this case, they don't have to. So it's it's a really nice dynamic in the morning. And it's it's a big responsibility to, as you know, wake up that early and come on and really start not only our Hawaii News now day, but also the day of all of the viewers in the community. And they take such pride in doing that. And because they do such a good job and they have such great chemistry in that ensemble style of a news program, it really affects and impacts the rest of our day, keeping us successful and keeping that piece really high for the viewers. And it just sets such a powerful tone of positivity and success for our day until we wrap at the end of the 10 p.m. newscast. You're right. I mean, it's great to start off the day like that. And consistency. I mean, they're just so consistent. And Katie, many of my friends, including myself, really enjoy watching Keahi Tucker and Stephanie Lum. Why why do they make such a great anchor team together? Well, I would say overall, it's excellence. I mean, they are the best in the business and they both are. And they've worked very, very hard to get to where they are today. I mean, I know that you've had Keahi on as a guest before and he shared a little bit about his background, but man, he left Hawaii and really put in some meaningful time in other markets to gain experience and learn how to serve audiences. And then to be able to come back here and also then take all that talent and then serve the community that he loves. Man, that was an investment in himself that's really paid off. And very similarly, Stephanie, you know, she has been in so many different roles in this industry and she worked in Guam. But really, one of the things that I admire about the two of them so much is they put in so much work behind the scenes. So it's not just coming to the desk and reading the news. From the moment they walk into this building, they are writing. They are being part of putting that newscast together and they care very deeply about the experience that our viewer has when watching the newscast that they're in every minute up till during the show is they're in action, making sure that those newscasts are serving the viewer with whatever the focus of the day is for the day. But most importantly, this is this is their community. So they are honored to serve the place that they grew up in. And it's just it's really rare to have two superstars in a newscast like that. So I think that's probably why we all enjoy them together so much. I completely agree with you, Katie. And, you know, they're Stephanie and Keahi, they have great character. And I also enjoy watching Mahelani Richardson, Ashley Nagaoka, your weather anchors, Guy Hagi, Jennifer Robbins, Ben Gutierrez. They all have great character. Now, how important is is character in the news business? Wow, just hearing you say all of those names of the incredible people, colleagues of mine, I get to work beside. I feel so fortunate. And you're right, great character is key because it builds trust. And given the news landscape nationally, man, are we proud to have the trust of our community? And we don't take it for granted. Our team, those people that you mentioned, they work hard every day to ensure that we're fulfilling our responsibilities to Hawaii as an ethical, accountable, diverse newsroom. And, you know, in this business right now, the definition of leadership can often be confused with ratings. And, yes, high ratings are great and they can be interpreted as leadership in this business, but true leadership and character comes from the credibility and reliability of your work. And there's just no dispute that that team and Hawaii News now really owns that leadership role. Oh, yeah, I totally see it. And, Katie, you mentioned my books earlier. I want to ask you, what are some things that really stood out to you in the books? Well, first, I just want to congratulate you on writing two incredibly successful and impactful books and just focusing on such an important topic that is important to focus on throughout your whole career if you're blessed to be a leader. So with beyond the lines, beyond the game, I just want you to know both are in my kindle right now. And I've been really learning a lot and appreciating reading them. Some of what really resonated with me is I see a lot of your topics and your writing is focused on keeping a high performing team at the top of their game. And that is truly our focus at Hawaii News now. We are in the big leagues from an industry perspective, from our market for sure. And we are in the we have the best of the business working here. And so having these self driven professionals working each day to do their best work, how is how can I as a leader support this level of drive and excellence? So two of the things that I really appreciated in your books were you talked about sharing appreciation, you know, with your players and noticing their effort, noticing their dedication and growth. And I've felt for a long time, I remember recognizing this thought process in my mind of I would think such nice things about the people that I work to beside and yet would keep those things to myself. And I made it a practice of if a wonderful thought or something I'm observing about a colleague or, you know, a community partner is going through my head, I'm not going to keep it to myself. I'm going to share that. And I really appreciated that you made that a point in your books to talk about. The other piece I loved that resonated was you talked about investing in people and that whole idea of, well, what happens if they leave? And then the thought of, well, what happens if they stay and you didn't invest in them? And I very much agree with that, that mindset. So from training opportunities to really focusing on ways where we can enhance people's quality of life, that is a big focus for me and the leadership team here at Hawaii News Now. And, you know, those things will make an impression on people and whether they choose to continue their career here at Hawaii News Now or they take all these skills somewhere else, they will remember that investing in people is important and spread that practice. So I'm a big fan and can't wait to finish reading your books. Well, Katie, I love what you mentioned there. I mean, it's it's so important. I mean, to really, like you said, acknowledge people when they're really doing great things and to really let them know that it's that we see that. And then to really strive for that superior culture of excellence. So I'm trying to inspire the world. Yes, but you're doing a great job. Now, Katie, can you share what are some of the challenges you deal with in the news industry? Absolutely. And because the news industry, I've worked in this business since I started in 2000, but with being able to now be in this unique situation, this unique position of general manager, I wanted to really talk about this regularly with the news leadership team. And they shared some of their takeaways from what are our most pressing pressing challenges right now that have had an impact on me. So one of the things that we talk about all the time is that people are absolutely our most valuable asset. And one of the biggest threats we faced over the last two years is their burnout and their exhaustion. We've seen it in ways that we had never seen before, just dealing with anxiety, dealing with covering just loss and really tough stories over and over again. Can that can have such a hard impact, especially on newer people to this industry, young producers, photographers and reporters. So just like everyone else is experiencing and has experienced these last two years, our team are reporters, photographers, producers and other professionals. They need the opportunity to step away from the daily grind and reflect on their practice. And it's really tough to do in a twenty four seven newsroom. And so our newsroom leaders have really focused on making it a priority to ensure that the team members have time to to support them, to innovate and to pursue a lot of different passion projects. So I think you may have seen if you follow what you use now, as you said you have, we've launched a lot of podcasts over the last two years. So we've launched podcasts that are making our news more accessible to people who like to listen to podcasts, whether they're outside walking or they're in their cars. But we've also launched a lot of new, passion inspired original podcasts from our team. So there are shows like Mothership with Stephanie Lam and it has her two best friends and they talk about parenthood. They talk about friendship and lessons they've learned along the way. And then they always have a featured guest who's very on topic with things that are happening that we're focused on. We have H&N off there, which is our way of being able to bring you the full interview, not just a sound bite here and there, but with a meaningful newscaster or newsmakers that are in our community. And then we even have a podcast series right now. It's called Repairing Earth and it's produced by one of our digital team, Emily Cristobal, and it showcases people who are really fighting climate change in our own backyard. But these were all born out of our team's inspiration and a passion for these topics. And so being able to support that we found is a really good way to help with refueling this very hardworking team. But I guess the biggest challenge slash opportunity right now is really trying to manage and attract new people to our profession so they can grow their portfolios and their skills. And one of the ways that we're doing that is we really focus on a strong internship program. And we find that a good percentage of those interns return here and become future producers, reporters, even on air posts. So it's it's been an incredible, incredible resource for us. But the last thing I would just say and you and I were talking about this earlier is the television news business is just one that requires constant innovation and creativity and investment. So that's one of the things that can be a challenge because those resources that we we need to be able to do that come out of our business community being able to really understand the value of our products. So our sales team and the professionals that are talking to those business leaders are always ensuring they understand why these why these products and news programs we have are so valuable to invest in. Katie, I really like hearing your insights. And yes, it's all about being creative and innovative. And Katie, I know that you are a certified life coach. Now, how did that come about? Well, it's kind of funny because, you know, taking a program like that and going for a certificate certification takes time and having kind of that work ethic that I like to pride myself on. I've never ever made time for myself to to do those types of courses that felt like a value added. But when I was the local sales manager after having been a solo salesperson for years, I was pregnant with my first child and went on maternity leave. And of course, had never understood what downtime looked like. So I signed myself up for a life coaching certification course. And I really truly I am fascinated by people and really believe that with the proper support and coaching, we are capable of anything. So I wanted to be able to meaningfully add to my skill set of supporting the team members that I work with and then even, you know, people in the community beyond the teams that I was on. And what I found by having these life coaching skills is you had real tools and tactics for keeping people excited and high when they were in their best time of life. But then you also had great tools for helping people shift perspective. You know, if they were in a place where they're at a crossroads and you really needed to be able to help them look at all the different roads they had ahead, you suddenly had a tool for that. And then I think most meaningful and something I would put apply over the last two years is that the ability to also honor when people are in really tough times and making space for that and not trying to brush aside that, wow, this is hard. But making space for that and then starting to figure out, OK, well, how are we going to move forward? So I think that just any time you can add to resources in your toolkit, it just helps to continue your leadership journey. Well, Katie, I without a doubt, I mean, being a life coach as well. I mean, greatly enhances you as a leader, just because what you said earlier about building relationships and having the awareness to really just help people and their well-being. And Katie, I want to ask you one more thing before we wrap up. Yeah, what's what's a valuable lesson you learned in life so far? There are so many. But I think the most valuable for me is really just that we are in control. I am in control of my perspective. And so each day, I mean, there are challenges I never thought I would see before in these unprecedented times. You know, sometimes instead of feeling like a leader, I feel like the school nurse and doing roles that I hadn't ever done before. But instead of letting that shape how I'm going to go forward, each day I can start fresh and decide to do my best. And my best might look different today, that it'll look tomorrow, but resetting each day and coming at it with, you know what? I can do my best work and I can start fresh today has really made me feel up for the challenge and just committed to doing the best work I can. Well, Katie, I have to say you are a fantastic leader and it was a pleasure having you on the show today and the impact that that you're making in our community is just priceless. So I want to really thank you. Thank you, Rusty. I have love this time with you and thank you for the work that you do. It's really meaningful and helping support us on our leadership journey. Thanks, Katie, 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 & Noble. I hope that Katie and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech, Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.