 And welcome to this week's edition of Business in Hawaii. I'm Byron Riddle, and we are broadcasting live from the Think Tech Studios in downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in, we are at www.thinktechhawaii.com. You may also subscribe to our programs and get our mailing list at that site as well. The theme of the Business in Hawaii is to share with you stories of local business by local people. Our guests share with us how they were able to build successes in our sometimes challenging business environment. In the Think Tech Studio with me today is Jennifer Dotson, vice president of For Last. Jennifer, welcome to the show. Thank you, Byron. Our first collaboration. I know. Congratulations. This is going to be good. Thank you. So, Jennifer, I'm going to want to start first with your background. Tell us who you are and where you're at, so why don't you tell us a little bit, and then I have a lot of things that I want to ask you as well. Okay. All right. That sounds good. So, like you said in your intro, I am a local person from Hawaii. I'm actually born and raised here in Hawaii, yes, and then I went away to school. I went to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and then I got my master's at the London School of Economics. So I am currently the vice president of philanthropy at National Kidney Foundation. Our CEO, Len Hayashita, was somebody that I've known for a while, actually, and I've admired and known about him in the nonprofit sector for a long time, and I'm just so excited now to be able to work with him and the whole team at National Kidney Foundation. So it's really neat, but really the way that I got to National Kidney Foundation is quite interesting, and I'll tell you a little story about it later, but let me let you know that it started with Senator Daniel Akaka way back when and I had gotten the chance as a child, a 12-year-old schoolgirl to visit Senator Akaka at his office in Washington, D.C., and he inspired me to pursue a career in government. Now, how that then led a local girl from Hawaii to pursue a career in government and then come back to Hawaii and dedicate my work to the nonprofit and the people of Hawaii. I'm excited to share that story with you today. Good. Awesome. And I appreciate that because this is very good. Now, you also, I mean, you have accolades all over the place. You are in PBN women who mean business. You were 40 under 40. You were nominated for non-profit business woman of the year. You know, you are an amazing woman. That in itself says a lot. So yeah, I want to hear some more about the story. So what else can you tell me here? Well, you're too kind, Byron, and I've known you for a long time. So I know you have a lot of accolades under your belt, too. So don't be so humble, but thank you for those kind words. It's really because I've had some amazing mentors in my life. Really wonderful mentors. One of the things that happened like I told you was Senator Akaka inspired me from a very young age. I got to visit his office as a 12-year-old in Washington, D.C. How did that come about? Well, you know, I told my mom, I really want to go to Washington, D.C. I think this is something that I want to do. When I grow up, I want to be like Senator Akaka. Of course, you know, we came from very poor, you know, poor means. We didn't have a lot of resources to do so. But we saved up, and my mom and I went to Washington, D.C., and I got to visit him. He let me sit at his desk, I mean, the big co-ed desk. It was amazing. I took pictures, and I actually kept those pictures because after I went to Georgetown University and graduated from the School of Foreign Service, I entered into the career that I had chosen as a young child, which was to work for the federal government. And one of my first assignments was in Hong Kong, and the first visiting delegation that I was in charge of receiving in Hong Kong in my job was to receive the Hawaii delegation. So Governor Kayatano was part of that delegation, and so was Senator Akaka. Oh, wow. He brought the picture of us way back when, on the steps of the Capitol, and he chuckled and he laughed, and he said, I'm so glad you're following your dreams and your passion. Well, guess what? Fast forward to now, where I am working at the Kidney Foundation, and I am helping the people of Hawaii battle kidney disease and raise awareness about chronic kidney disease and organ transplantation in Hawaii. It's really because Senator Akaka, our beloved late Senator Akaka, he also succumbed to kidney disease. And the Akaka family has been so supportive of the Kidney Foundation and so supportive in the work that the Kidney Foundation does. And I'm just so grateful to be able to work with this team and the Akaka family and all of our donors and all of our supporters in the work that we do. So it's, you know, there's a lot of work ahead of us, but you have these wonderful supporters and wonderful people supporting us like the Akaka family has been amazing. And it's really like it's come full circle. I was going to say, yeah, you really come all the way around and back to where you, I mean, that's, no, so, okay, you were in government, what brought you back to Hawaii then? Yeah, you know, that's a little bit of a sad story, but you know, it's something that I would freely share with you. The one thing that brought me back to Hawaii was 9-11. And I experienced some pretty deep loss during 9-11, and I came home to Hawaii to heal. I came home to Hawaii to heal my heart. And one of the things that really helped me I found was reconnecting with the volunteer programs that I volunteered with as a child. So when I was 16 years old, one of the first volunteer programs that I participated with was the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I was a camp counselor for Jerry's kids. So those of you who remember back in the day, Jerry Lewis had the Jerry Lewis telethon drinks Labor Day. And so there's this annual summer camp for Muscular Dystrophy Association. And as a 16-year-old girl, I signed up as a volunteer. Fast forward to when I did come back to Hawaii post 9-11, I reconnected with the Muscular Dystrophy Association as a volunteer. I found that volunteering helped me heal, helped me find purpose in life, and helped me find joy and happiness because it is, it's an absolute joy to give back to this community that I grew up in. It was really neat. Well, so the connection is I ended up working for Muscular Dystrophy Association after starting off as a volunteer. So I became the health care coordinator at Muscular Dystrophy Association. Best job I've ever had. OK, I got to tell you a little story because talking about Jerry's kids and muscular dystrophy as a kid, and I was probably 11 or 12 watching the show, I got up and got motivated. And I went around my whole neighborhood. This was in a kahi in Kailua. I went around house door-to-door collecting, and we donated everything that I gained because of Iowa, so motivated. So that's just a little, little story. That's really neat. That's really neat. And so you're actually, it's a good segue into the philanthropy work that we do at National Kidney Foundation, but any nonprofit that you would come across in Hawaii or in the United States. Philanthropy is a voluntary act of giving with no expectation of something in return. It's you're giving from your heart because you were so motivated to do so because of something you heard, something you experienced, something you saw. And so I'm really glad to hear that. And that's the type of work that I get to do every day. I mean, isn't that cool? I mean, I get to work with people to inspire them to give voluntarily to support something that's bigger than us as an individual, bigger than me as a person, bigger than any of us. And I love hearing that story. And so it's, I can just imagine in my mind little Byron walking around a kahi door-to-door and saying, hi, will you help support Jerry's kids? Yeah. So that's kind of how I started. I had a little jar, coin, did you collect coins? Coins, whatever they would give. I think a couple of people even wrote out some checks. Yeah. And every little bit helped. It really does. Yeah. So, yeah, I was inspired. Well, hi, Byron. That's awesome. Well, we should probably get in and start talking more about kidney disease. So let's start talking about kidney disease. Let's talk about what are some of the symptoms? Oh, gosh. OK, so I'll first start off by letting you know we have an amazing clinical team at the kidney foundation. And so we have nurses. We have dieticians, a clinical staff that is dedicated to helping people learn more about kidney disease. And what I do is I connect people in the community to our clinical team. So amazing, amazing team. I really encourage you to meet them. They're the work that they do every day with the people. So what are the symptoms of kidney disease? We really, we really say that there's things like that. It doesn't cause any pain. The symptoms of kidney disease doesn't cause any pain because the kidneys don't have a lot of nerve endings. And so it's not like you walk around and go, oh, oh, oh, I feel something, you know, kidneys. Kidney stone you do. Well, kidney stone you do. But that's different. Yeah, it is different, but it can be related. But anyways, I'll tell you a story. And this is one of the stories that I heard right early on when I first started with the kidney foundation. And it was about Jared Iwase. Do you, does this ring a bell? It's the Iwasse name. Ring a bell and a bell. OK, so what does it, what does it remind you of? Somebody an elected official perhaps, right? Yeah, OK. So the cool thing about what I do at the kidney foundation is I connect with donors, but I also connect with, you know, businesses and also government and just people in our community. It doesn't matter what your last name or who you are, but it just so happens that one of the stories that I heard was about Jared Iwase, who's the son of our former senator Iwase, Randy Iwase. And his story, and we ended up writing our annual appeal letter about this story. It was written by his mother, Janet Iwase. And it tells the story about how Jared, a young man, a healthy young man, who played tennis and coached his nephew's soccer team and all of these things. He actually went to the eye doctor. And the eye doctor immediately sent him to the emergency room because of something he saw. And that eye doctor saw that there was bleeding behind the eye. Now, as you can imagine, someone who was bleeding behind the eye, you would think has a lot of pain, but there was no pain associated with his symptoms. So as he went to the doctor and was diagnosed with kidney disease, it was because of what an eye doctor discovered. So if you can imagine, he immediately tried to take steps to address the kidney disease. And it was quite severe at that point. Unfortunately, as the story goes, Jared passed away four months after he, after this was discovered. But usually I will tell you that I brought something to show you here. You can hold this. But there are five stages of chronic kidney disease. And so you ask about some of the symptoms. So if you look on the back, there's the symptoms. And then on the front, there's things that you can, there's programs that are associated with that. So this, what we call five stages of chronic kidney disease, you can see in stage one, there is kidney damage with lowered kidney function. Stage two, there's further kidney damage and lower kidney function. And so as you see, each one of the stages actually shows there's a reading here, a number associated, and it's GFR, it's called GFR. And you get this on your lab report. Every time you go to the doctor, you actually get this number on your lab report. So it corresponds with these five stages. So you can actually check yourself or your loved one. The stages of kidney disease that you may or may not be experiencing. But this has been something that actually something, another thing that was really cool is that Hawaii, in Hawaii, the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii developed this GFR reading so that it would go on everybody's lab report whenever you go to the doctor. So next time you go to the doctor, do me a favor, take a look at that and look at what the number is. Okay, well, we're going to take a short break. And this is Business on Hawaii. We'll see you back here shortly. Hi, guys. I'm your host, Lillian Cumick from Lillian's Vegan World. I come to you live every second Friday from 3 p.m. And this is the show where I talk about the plant-based lifestyle and veganism. So we go through recipes, some upcoming events, information about health regarding your health, and just some ideas on how you can have a better lifestyle, eat healthier, and have fun at the same time. So do join me. I look forward to seeing you and Aloha. 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, the 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. Konnichiwa. Think Tech Hawaii ga nihongo de oguri shite imasu. Konnichiwa, Hawaii. Post na kunisei kari desu. Maishu kakushuu getsu youbi. Niji kara desu ne. Nihongo de katsuya kuu sarete irassharu. Welcome back. This is Business in Hawaii with us today is Jennifer Dotson, Vice President of philanthropy. So yes, Jennifer, this has been amazing. You're just a wealth of knowledge and I'm glad that you're here. You know, we just kind of went over the symptoms, but now let's kind of go back into, let's talk about National Kidney Foundation itself, if you would, and perhaps maybe local versus national and what it is that the difference and how it all comes together. Oh, interesting. I'm glad you asked about that. And that word philanthropy, it just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? You have to say it like five times fast. Philanthropy. Philanthropy. Well, how about National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii? Five times fast, right? So the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii is actually celebrating over 30 years in the local community. And interestingly enough, you asked about the difference between the Hawaii chapter and the national. So the Hawaii chapter is actually fully incorporated here in Hawaii. So anyone who donates to the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii here in Hawaii actually has the choice to keep the money here in Hawaii because it's a national organization, but our chapter is incorporated here in Hawaii, which means we have our local board of governors that is responsible for governing and then also has fiduciary responsibilities and has policy input to a local board of directors. So I actually, my paycheck is cut out of Hawaii, not where the national office is. Our national headquarters is located in New York. Now there is a really nice tie between National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii and the headquarters in New York. We actually had the new CEO from the national headquarters, Kevin Longgino, visit Hawaii. And that was the first visit from a national CEO to the Hawaii chapter. And we had an amazing meeting with him, lots of synergy, lots of great discussion and just, he's an amazing man. He's a kidney transplant recipient himself, who is now the CEO of our national organization. Our local CEO, Glen Hayashita, has been our CEO for over 24 years, a long time CEO, a great mentor to me. I love working with him and I love working with our team at National Kidney Foundation. And I can concur, he is a fabulous man. Yes, he's a big fan of Byron too. He was actually a little bit sad that he couldn't be on this show. So he's hoping that you'll invite him to your next. We'll have to do that. Your next show, okay? Sure. What are some of the ways that people can donate or assist? I mean, volunteers, what are some of the things that they can do? You really are asking me one of my favorite questions. So of course you said volunteers. One way to contribute is volunteering. And so we couldn't do the work that we do without our wonderful volunteers and we have volunteers from all over the place, corporate volunteers as well as medical students from UH. The picture that you just saw was of the Central Pacific Bank employees that helped us with one of our events. And so the volunteers help us from anything from our kidney screenings to our gala, to our walk event. Other ways to donate to us, of course, my favorite is if you, Byron, if you wrote me a check today as a donation to the National Kidney Foundation, I would be so happy. And so I'm waiting for that check, okay? Another way you could donate is like, for example, if you have a will, you can make sure that Kidney Foundation is named in your will as a beneficiary. So that's called plan giving. And so other ways, a lot of people know Kidney Foundation because we're famous for our kidney cars program. And it's over 20 years old. It's one of the oldest kidney donation programs in Hawaii. It's very successful. Yes! It's so, it's, you know what? Anyone who meets me says, they have such a smooth and easy time donating their vehicle to kidney cars. And that's what we really aim to do. So you can do it online. Just go to our website, kidneyhigh.org. And it actually walks you through step by step on how to donate your vehicle. And so it's really neat. If you look on our Instagram account, we have a great social media account. We have Facebook, Twitter, and we have Instagram. But if you look on our Instagram, there's a picture of a very nice Jaguar that was donated to us. So we don't get just the, you know, the junk cars. We get some beautiful cars too because people are so inclined to donate to us. This Jaguar is this beautiful, beautiful blue XJ and a car like that we would welcome as a donation. So besides cars, you know that we also accept household items and clothing, household goods. We're one of the organizations that still does pickup. So you call my number and you call kidney car, kidney program and we will schedule a pickup in your neighborhood and come and pick it up right in IKAHI in fact if you want to. I'm not in IKAHI anyway, but that's where I grew up. Your mom's house or something like that, right? So. Clean out mom's house. Sure. What other kind of resources do you have available to the people in need? If someone came to you, what kind of resources do you have? How can you help them? I'm so glad you asked that too. And remember I work with this amazing clinical team and there we have registered nurses, we have registered dieticians. They have classes and educational programs all the time. So for example, there's a diabetes self-management program. It's a free class that you can attend. You can register and attend. Anybody can register and you can sign up your mom. You can sign up your uncle for it. So there's a diabetes self-management program. We also have a diabetes prevention program. So even before you get down the line of the different stages of kidney disease, you can actually prevent diabetes. So we have classes like that. We have kidney screenings where we go into the community and we actually do a health screening. And then that's when you actually have a licensed clinical staff walk through your test results with you. So it's really helpful. I mean, I always encourage people to go see their doctor, go see their primary care physician. But I think we all know that it's not something that we are always good about. I hope you're going to your doctor. But if you're not, right, good. But if you're not, and we have this free community screening free in your neighborhood, please sign up, please join us. And you would be able to take advantage of the screening as well as a licensed clinical staff walking you through what everything, what are all these numbers mean on your lab? Exactly. Is diabetes then one of the major contributors to kidney disease? And so, yes. It's chronic kidney disease. And so I'm glad you said that. In fact, I was just talking with a clinical staff this morning. Diabetes is a leading contributor to chronic kidney disease. And so we encourage people to really take care of their health, drink water, sodium, reduce sugar. And so we talk about exercise and having an active lifestyle. It's all about raising awareness, right? Things that you could do right now, right today. And if not, we have other resources, like these classes I told you about. And then I know you were very interested in a cookbook. So you actually. I was going to mention that also. You wanted to ask me about this cookbook. And so we have this cookbook that is developed. And it has recipes that even kids can do. In fact, the kids love to do the recipes in this book. And these cookbooks are available for sale on our website, kidneyhigh.org. And so I know, Byron, you're such a foodie that you are kind of looking through these recipes and going, yum, yum, yum. I would do that. And it's all healthy, right? It's all about using less salt, less sugar, reducing protein, increasing vegetables, right? And drinking that water, right? Not soda, it's water. Not soda, water, yes. Yeah, thanks for asking all about that. No, that was good, I'm glad. Now I wanted to talk about some of your major events because I know you have ongoing events. So let's talk about some of your events. All right, well, I know you are gonna come to all of our events this year, right? So we mentioned that some of the fundraising work that we do is talking with our corporate partners and individual donors. But really bringing them together for events. So we have an annual gala that happens every year in June. And guess what? We actually have a date this year and it's June 10th, 2020. So I know you're going to mark your calendar and come. And the fun thing about that is last year's gala, we actually had one of those backdrops called a step and repeat, and it was printed by JPG Media. And so we're very grateful for their contribution to us. So thank you so much for your part and JPG Media's part in helping us. So the gala brings together everyone to the Honolulu Country Club, and it is capped at 30 tables. We actually maxed out last year. We actually had 31 tables. You stuck one in. And so yeah, we had to squeeze one more in. And it's a really great way to honor the kidney champions in our community. And so last year's kidney champions honored. We had Brian Lee, who's a plan giving estate planner. And he's been educating people about, like I told you, including kidney foundation as part of their estate plan. And we had another Brian Lee, a Dr. Brian Lee, a nephrologist from Kaiser, who is also honored. And then also Dr. Gerard Akaka from Queens Hospital and the son of Senator Akaka, the man I actually have to thank for bringing me back to kidney foundation. And so besides the gala, we also have a walk. It's called Walk on the Wild Side and where we have walk teams that come together. The walk team that you see here, all these smiling faces is from one of the families of our corporate sponsor from Diagnostic Laboratory Services, DLS. And it's so cool because all of these teams come together to walk, be active, raise funds for kidney foundation and DLS. The really neat connection to DLS is that their current president is also a kidney donor. So isn't that neat how we can have these fundraising events that not only raise funds to help kidney foundation, but it brings together the amazing people from our community to be together and meet each other. And this photo that we just saw was actually a kidney donor holding the hand of a kidney recipient. And it's really neat. We're down to the last couple of seconds here, but I also want to mention the new center. Oh, yes. Before we have to go, we're down to 15 seconds. Okay, so we have to mention that we are building a new facility in West Oahu in Kapolei. And it is going to be our new resource center named in honor of Senator Akaka. Of course. So yes, the future looks bright and we invite you and all of our supporters to please help us make this dream a reality and help the Akaka Community Center come to life. So stay tuned. Okay, with that, we're out of time. Thank you, Jennifer, for joining us today. And a big thank you to the production staff here in the studio. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, please email your information to showsatthinktekawaii.com. Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at 2 p.m. We look forward to seeing you here next week. Thank you.