Written by A. Alvarez

"Don't be afraid of new challenges." Just some advice from Mr. Mike White, our guest speaker on Monday. Mr. White is the general manager from Ka'anapali Beach Hotel. He was born and raised on Oahu, graduated from University of Hawai'i at Manoa and is married with 5 children and just about 30 animals.

He has bee the G.M. at KBH for 14 years but before that he worked at many other fine hotels in the Hawaiian Islands. Resorts such as Hale Kulani, Hawaiian Regent, Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, Mauna Lani and then finally making his way to KBH.

He shared with us some information about the Po'okela Program. A program that has been established since 1986. KBH is the only hotel that has such a program and they are really proud of that. The Po'okela Program is all about preserving the Hawaiian culture. Employees must attend these classes and these classes teach them all about the culture and values. He emphasized how values are your guideposts. Without values you have nothing.

KBH was named "Most Hawaiian Hotel", awarded 3^rd best value hotel in the world, top 20 hotels in the world and was on the gold list. They have a group of singers and have put out 2 c.d.'s.

We also went over salaries. The grounds department makes about $20,000, supervisors make $30-40,000 and executives make between $45-75,000 annually. Wouldn't you want to be an executive!?!? He also touched on how 40% of jobs in the hotel are computer focused so you should have some sort of background with computers and be computer literate.

I also asked Mr. White about him being in state elective office. He was a state representative for West Maui, Moloka'i, and Lana'i for 5 years and he said that it was a very good experience and it didn't really affect his job of G.M. It actually was helpful because his staff got a lot of training doing things on their own without him there to assist them.

Overall, his presentation was great. He is a very admirable man that has been through a lot of things and it's nice to see that he has made it that far. He left us with some words of wisdom, "Work hard, keep focused."

S. Ii - Mr. White says that his employees volunteer a lot to the community and their biggest challenge is to grab people's hearts. It's not the facility that makes their hotel the best but the employees!

H. Johnson - His advice to us was "don't be afraid to take a challenge or chance it."