 I'm Connie Chang, your guest host for today's Law Across the Sea program on ThinkTech Hawaii. I'm delighted to have Emily Reber Porter in the studio with me today. Emily is currently the chief operating officer of the McNaughton Group, a well-known real estate development company here in Hawaii, but she began her career as a lawyer. Emily grew up in Hawaii, then she crossed the sea three times to earn a bachelor's degree from Princeton, a graduate degree from Osaka City University as a Fulbright scholar, and a law degree from Harvard. And then she crossed the sea three more times. First, to come back home to Honolulu to work as a law clerk for Judge Gilmore and Federal District Court, and then as a litigator at a large Honolulu law firm. Then she moved to Washington, D.C., and was a litigator for a large national law firm. In 2008, she moved to San Francisco and became the first general counsel at a startup internet company. And she eventually also became the chief administrative officer and the vice president of customer and professional operations of that company. In 2015, she came back home again and joined the McNaughton Group as executive vice president of operations and strategy. In 2017, she was promoted and is now the chief operating officer. Emily was recognized as a corporate counsel rising star in 2014 when she was in San Francisco. Here in Hawaii, she was named a woman to watch by Pacific Business News in 2017. And earlier this year, she was named by Hawaii Business Magazine as one of the 20 for the next 20. Her professional work has been featured in local and mainland publications, and she has spoken on panels in Hawaii and across the mainland. Emily is a wife and a mother of two young sons and also serves on the boards of several nonprofits. She's here today to talk about the topic of transitions, and in particular her experience moving from the courtroom to the boardroom. Emily, welcome. Congratulations on all your achievements, and thank you for being here. Oh, thank you for having me on the show. I appreciate it. Sure. I'd like to start at the very beginning and ask you to please tell us about growing up here in Hawaii. Well, I feel very fortunate to have grown up in Hawaii, on Oahu, on the southeast shore. Hawaii is a very community-oriented place where family and friends are very important, and we spend all of our free time with them over at people's houses or at the beach. I grew up with a brother and a sister and lots of cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles, so we would spend a lot of family time together, and my brother and I, who was close in age to me, riding bikes around the neighborhood, going surfing at the end of the street. There was a point, a surf break over there, and also body surfing at Sandy's and Makapu. When I was in school, I was active dancing, fula, cegation, jazz, and also playing piano and doing tennis, so our parents kept us very busy, probably to keep us out of trouble. Sounds idyllic and very diverse, and a little bit about your father and your mother. Where are they from? Sure. So my mom's family came from Canton, China, in the early 1900s. They worked on a plantation and then had shops in Chinatown. My dad's family, he came from Southern California. My mom was a concert pianist, so she performed and also taught piano, and my father is a pretty, I think, well-known and well-respected corporate attorney here in town, so tough act to follow with us. Yeah. So you had the smarts, and you had the talent as well. That's great. And then you decided to go to Princeton for college. Why the East Coast, and what did you study at Princeton? Well, my great aunt gave me some really good advice some time ago when I was trying to decide in high school why I had to study so hard. I was thinking, you know, I like dance and I like the beach. Why am I spending so many of these beautiful hours of the afternoon sitting in my room doing homework? And she said, Emily, it's great that you love dance and the beach, but sometime in life you might like to do something else. And if you work really hard now, then more options will be available to you. And I really took that to heart. She was a very wise lady, and many times throughout my career I really heeded that advice. So for college, I was thinking, well, what's the best way to really learn and grow and challenge myself? I thought living far away from home on the East Coast in a place where I would be with lots of different people from diverse backgrounds who were very talented would be a good next step. So I remember getting that acceptance letter from Princeton. I was getting out of the car at our home, and I read it and said, yes, so loud that the neighbors came out. Terrific. So growing and excelling, that sounds like a theme in your career. And then you went to Japan, so tell me about that. How was that? Yes. In college, I was trying to figure out what to do next, and again, I wanted to have a really growing experience. I had studied Japanese in high school and also in college, and been there on a couple of home stays before. I applied for a Fulbright grant to do research in Japan on human rights and discrimination issues, and I was lucky enough to be accepted into the program, so I went over there, lived by myself. It's called Hitorigurashi in Osaka in a small suburb and was one of, I think, the very few foreigners in that town. It was a really wonderful year. I felt very free and also at times very lonely, but all in all, it was a great opportunity for growth. I learned a lot and really feel like it was one of the most formative years of my life. Did something happen there that made you want to go to law school, or did you always want to be a lawyer? Yes. Well, my father, as I mentioned, was a corporate attorney, and sitting around the dinner table with him in the evenings, he always made it home for dinner, even if he worked late after. I really appreciated the way he thought about things. He was very logical and fair, solutions oriented, and I knew that a lot of that had to do with just how he was as a person, but I felt like some of it must have to do with his training, and so that kind of made me think about law. Also he just had such a great work ethic with very good listener, humble person, strong moral values, so I really admired him. I also had a couple of teachers in high school who taught a law and society class, so that was my glimpse into litigation. They did a mock trial, and I really loved that. I've had the fortune to work with your father, and yes, he's very sharp and very humble, as you said. Thank you very much. So you ended up at Harvard Law, which is the same law school that your father went to. Yes. Yes. And how was it there, and how did you move back to Hawaii and then take on your next transition going to Washington, D.C.? Yes. Well, Harvard Law School was an incredible experience. It was nice to have my father visit me there from time to time. Yes. And he said, oh, things have changed a lot here at the law school, because I think they've gotten a little nicer to the students. So yeah, it was a really great time at Harvard. Yes. Yes. And so you're at a law firm in Honolulu, and you're also at a law firm in Washington, D.C. How are your experiences there different or the same? Sure. So I would say that Hawaii is a very nurturing environment for the law firm. They are hoping and expecting that you will be there for a long time, so they really invest in your professional development and also get to know you as a person. I had two excellent mentors who really taught me how to be a great litigator, and a personal takeaway is that they had two very different styles. And when you're a young attorney trying to figure out your way, you wonder, oh, how do I have to be? And the answer I learned from them was you just have to be yourself. You just have to be your best self. And that was really helpful. I think also in Hawaii, because you are in a small environment and you meet the same attorneys over and over again, there is more of a tendency to be very kind of professional and kind to one another, even if you're across the table. If somebody asks for a one-day continuance so that they can attend a child's graduation in Hawaii, it's more likely that the opposing counsel would agree. Yes. You see, they might say no because of some hypothetical advantage it might give them. Yes. So it just felt different. I guess the last thing is that in Hawaii, the cases were staffed a little more lightly, so I was able to work across an entire case and have more an impact that way. In DC, the cases were staffed with lots of attorneys for a good reason, and so often I would be focused in on one area or a set of witnesses, something like that. Maybe you could be more strategic and big picture when you're here in Hawaii working on the smaller cases and being more of the top person in that, and you're also able to find some really great mentors in Hawaii, which I think is really, really important. Yes. And then you were in San Francisco, so how did that happen? Yes. Well, let's see. I guess after having worked at two law firms, I felt that I was getting pulled in the direction of really enjoying advising clients and how to do things in a future-looking manner. And so I thought, okay, time for a new challenge. Why don't I think about going in-house and find a company that has my same values and is doing something that I think is really wonderful and helps them grow? I guess the second challenge was to do it at a place where a lot of companies were being born and growing at a rapid rate, and that was in the Bay Area. Yes. So my husband agreed to move from D.C. to California with me. By then we had two little boys, two sons, and it was really a great experience, I think, transitioning from law firm to in-house, even though I very much liked being a law firm attorney. I think I was just ready for the next step. Yeah. So you did like being a lawyer. You did want to move across the continents to the other coast, and you wanted this challenge of being in a totally different environment using the skills that you learned as a litigator in a tech company. So what was that like? Yes. Well, it was actually interesting trying to get a job in-house as a litigator, because at that time it was less common. Typically in-house attorneys are hired from other companies in-house. So getting that first in-house job is the real difficult part. And if you didn't have in-house experience, they wanted you to have a corporate law background, and I didn't have that. So part of being a lawyer is learning how to problem solve. So I lined up the requirements of the position with all of my litigation experience and made the connection. So for example, when they said, you need to have contracts drafting a negotiating experience, I said, well, actually I do have that, not in the corporate law sense, but in litigation if there's a settlement reached, which happens quite a lot, you have to negotiate and draft the settlement documents. So check the box that way. And so when I went in-house, I was the first counsel the company had been operating for a few years. And it was really interesting to be the first attorney there amongst a lot of entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers. Yes. How exciting. Yes. And tell me how you found that job. Sure. Well, I found it on Craigslist. Okay. It's interesting, because my company was an internet platform, and they used another internet platform to advertise for this job. The job announcement caught my attention because it was a first in-house position, and I liked that idea. Also, they said that beyond all of the other requirements, they wanted to hire people across the company who were smart, fun, and who got things done. Sounds like you. I thought that would be a great job, colleagues like that. And they also put sort of a riddle in the job announcement. Oh, okay. You had to answer the riddle for them. Oh, my goodness. And was there actually a real correct answer to the riddle? Yes, there was. Okay. Although I gave an indication of the correct answer, as well as an alternative way to figure it out. That was based on the nuanced wording of it, so I think that was a little amusing for them. We're going to take a short break. We're going to be right back, and we're going to continue talking about the tech company that Emily was at. We'll be right back. Aloha. I'm Richard Concepcion, the host of Hispanic Hawaii. You can watch my show every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. We will bring you entertainment, educational, and also we'll tell you what is happening right here within our community. Think Tech Hawaii, Aloha. Hi. I'm Ethan Allen, host on Think Tech Hawaii of Pacific Partnerships in Education. Every other Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m., I hope you'll join us as we explore the value, the accomplishments, and the challenges of education here in the Pacific Islands. Aloha. I'm Stan Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii, where community matters. This is the place to come to think about all things energy. We talk about energy for the grid, energy for vehicles, energy in transportation, energy in maritime, energy in aviation. We have all kinds of things on our show, but we always focus on hydrogen here in Hawaii because it's my favorite thing. That's what I like to do. We talk about things that make a difference here in Hawaii, things that should be a big changer for Hawaii. We hope that you'll join us every Friday at noon on Stan Energyman and take a look with us at new technologies and new thoughts on how we can get clean and green in Hawaii. Aloha. Welcome back to Law Across the Sea. I'm Connie Chang, your guest host. With me is Emily Rupert Porter from the McNaughton Group. Emily, you were telling me about just joining this tech company in San Francisco in 2008. You were there for seven years. During that time, you saw a period of incredible growth and you also grew your roles at the company. So you started as the first general counsel and then you eventually became an executive. Can you tell me about that? How did you grow your roles? And also what advice do you have for people who are making that transition and going in-house? Sure. I think it did take me a little while to transition from being a lawyer at a law firm to a lawyer in-house. Okay. It's a really different mindset. I think when I first came in, I was thinking about it as how do I mitigate risk, minimize risk, right? Yes. And very quickly, I understood that my role was really different in-house. It was how do I help the business get from point A to point B in a way that was legally compliant? So when someone came to me and said, Emily, I'd like to get to be doing this, instead of just saying, oh no, don't do that, I would have to say, hmm, interesting, please tell me about B. Why do we want to get to B? How do we know we've gotten to B? And what are the other ways we could get to B and really work together? Because as an in-house counsel, you really want to be a partner for the business. And if people are avoiding you because they think you're the sort of a business prevention department, they're not going to be showing you all the opportunities you could have to help them. So in a pretty short time, I think I recognized that I needed to shift gears and become more of a partner. And ever since I did that, I think all of the opportunities were open and I saw more and more ways to help the business, even outside of just pure legal advice. And that's really how I grew in the role. My CEO and I had a great relationship and we would talk about the business, which also as an in-house counsel, you have to know inside and out, just like the facts of the case. And when I saw opportunities to do things better, for example, customer care, making sure the customers were taken care of well so that down the road it wouldn't turn into a legal issue to make sure the quality of the website and the service were excellent. So there wouldn't be problems that would then again result in some kind of legal action. And so through those understandings of the business and conversations with my CEO, I was able to suggest how we could do better and then lead those initiatives. Same thing for HR, strategic planning, and also finance and accounting, some other things. Yeah. So tell me, how did you actually learn the business? Can you give our audience some actionable items that they could actually try to implement? Sure. I didn't know all of the vocabulary used when I first joined the company. That's common. Yes. So, well, before I joined the company, I tried to do a lot of reading about the space, the company, and then when I was at meetings, not understanding some words, I would be jotting down the words and then researching them or their concept offline, but that's kind of standard stuff, learning on the job, self-study. The other piece that I think was really helpful as I grew from managing just myself to a small team, to several different teams, and also outsourced operations, so it was quite a lot of people in departments, was executive coaching. Oh, okay, and how did that happen? Did you ask for that or did they say, Emily? Yes. So, I had a couple of professional acquaintances in Hawaii who also made the transition from being a lawyer to being in-house and then also taking more business roles on becoming COO, CAOs, and CEOs, and one of them gave me the advice that I could ask for an executive coach. I think typically people think you are given an executive coach when you are not performing and need help, but I think more and more these days people who are trying to have a more impactful business will ask for an executive coach, so that's what I did. I asked for an executive coach and the company covered it and I interviewed a few choices because I think it's really important to have a personal connection with the coach. And it was a great experience, about six months. It also just gave me the confidence to know that being a business person isn't so drastically different from anything I'd done before. Being a leader wasn't so drastically different. You just had to really kind of dig deep in yourself, be yourself, and get to know the company, the people, and things would just kind of fall into place. There's no secret sauce. Okay, okay, and also I think your perspective that you can learn new things and that you already do have a lot of the skills that you would need to have as an executive is helpful because a lot of people can limit themselves sometimes. They'll just focus on the things they don't have rather than the things that they do have and the things that they definitely can learn because there's learning on every single job, right? Yes. Well, I think as a lawyer you learn new facts every time you have a new case, right? It's a new law, new company, new industry, and that ability to get up to speed quickly and feel comfortable in situations that are not well known, I was well versed in from being a litigator. You had learned how to learn. Yes, yes. That's correct. You did that very effectively and you also experienced a very different culture because you were at a very traditional legal job working as a law clerk and for a federal judge and then in very established law firms and then at this tech company which is totally different and then you came back home to Hawaii. So how is all of that? What led you back home here? Sure. Well, Hawaii has always been my home. I always called Hawaii home when I was on the mainland, never changed my 808 cell number and I think it's the people who are here and the culture and the community orientation that really made me feel like I would never call any place else home permanently. We were living in D.C. and we were having our second baby. I actually flew home one month before my due date to give birth to our second son in Hawaii as preparation for eventually moving back home so that he could say he was born and raised in Hawaii just like his older brother. Yes, I can see you're a long-term planner. So how did the opportunity at the Big Dot Group come about? Did you find that on Craigslist too? I did not. It was actually not. There wasn't a particular position open. I had stayed in touch with a lot of people while we were living on the mainland and through a mutual connection, once we decided we wanted to really try to move home, I was put in touch with the current CEO of the company and our families had sort of known of each other. I think my father and his father had done some business together in the past. And so there was some familiarity and they understood that I was serious about wanting to move home and would have a good understanding of the place and the culture. So we met a few times in Hawaii in San Francisco, got to know each other, I learned about the Magnotin Group and all the wonderful things it was doing in Hawaii, very innovative future thinking, but also they really have a heart for Hawaii and doing things the right way for the community. So it just felt like an excellent fit and I think with my experience on the mainland they thought that maybe we should find a way to have us move home and work together. Yeah, I'm so glad that worked out. So am I. Yeah, and they created this role specifically for you then. And now you're fully transitioned, you're not a lawyer anymore, you've no longer got the general counsel in your title. You're a chief operating officer, totally an executive. A lot of people becoming executives after being lawyers now. What do you do as a chief operating officer? Well, I think once you're a lawyer, you're kind of never not a lawyer. I still have that in me and I think I apply it every day, the problem solving, the communication. And so from time to time I do definitely use my legal skills in the role, but my role now is really to work with the CEO and the chairman and all of my colleagues just to make sure that the organization is heading in the direction it wants to head and doing things the best that it can. I'm also really involved in their corporate social responsibility program. We brought together all of the wonderful giving they've been doing all over the years volunteer work and also work on boards and put together a foundation so we could meet and really think through strategically how we can have the biggest positive impact in Hawaii and that's been really rewarding. Yeah, I did want to ask you about your personal values and how your personal values intersect with your work and what keeps you motivated in your work. Tell me about that. Absolutely, in law school I had a professor who said that he feels passionate about doing good and well at the same time. You don't always have to make a choice. So in all of the roles that I've had, whether it be a law firm, I felt like I was helping clients but I also found time to do pro bono work at my internet company. I felt like the mission of the company, it actually was to help people. It allowed customers to ask questions online and experts to answer them really quickly and for small sums of money so I felt like in my day job I was really living by my doing well and doing good and here at the McDonald's group they just do such excellent work here in Hawaii, you know, from all that I'd known about them before joining the company and they're wonderful people. It always comes back to the people for me and the community-mindedness so it really aligns with my values. Sounds like you're living your dream and you're certainly making a great contribution to the state. I'm very, very lucky to be home. Your paid work and your non-profit work because you're on several non-profit boards. So what's next for you, Emily? Would you ever go back to law, do you think? Well, that's a really tough question. I think life is definitely not a straight path and I don't have a crystal ball so I wouldn't rule it out but I'm really happy where I am. I think there's a lot to be done for me professionally to continue to develop and what motivates me is just making sure I'm making positive contributions to the best of my abilities. So as long as I'm able to do that, I think, you know, seeing opportunities within Hawaii to both at the Mignotten Group and the non-profit world is where I'll probably stay for quite a while. I don't plan on moving away from Hawaii again. I'm sure they're happy to hear that as well. And I think Hawaii is home and will stay home. Good, good. So after having made these successful transitions, do you have some takeaways about how to transition into a new career or to make any kind of change in your life? Yes, I guess it's important to know that a lot of people go through all kinds of transitions in life and while you might have some apprehension, just I've always remembered my great grandmother's advice or my great aunt's advice. Remember that if you're doing your best in the moment, you'll always have other opportunities available and when those become available, don't be afraid of them. If it interests you and it aligns with your values, really go for it. And there are a lot of people you can talk to about making transitions. There are a lot of materials out there and executive coaches are always available too. You can find them through word of mouth or looking online, but I think meeting with your potential executive coach in person really matters and I would highly recommend that. Good, good. We have a few seconds left. Any final thoughts? Let's see. Well, I guess it just comes back to my appreciation for what my parents gave me early in life. My brother and sister, they were always focused on our education. They always asked us questions about what we were doing in school that day and always supported us in worthwhile endeavors. So I give them just really all my appreciation and love and I hope to be half as great as they were as parents to my own children. That's wonderful. That's very humble of you as well too. No, it's very true. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so glad that you came home and I look forward to seeing you in the news again. Oh, thank you very much Connie. Appreciate it. Thanks Connie. Aloha.