LEADERSHIP CORNER
A&B planning manager sees 'very promising' economy
Interviewed by Kelly Yamanouchi
Advertiser Staff Writer
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Title: Manager of corporate planning
Organization: Alexander & Baldwin Inc., a shipper, property manager and agribusiness company
Age: 33
High school: Sacred Heart High School in Kingston, Mass.
College: Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration
Post-graduate: University of Virginia, MBA
Life-changing event: I moved to Beijing, China, when I was 21 to run a bar. ... It was an exciting opportunity to be able to [take] kind of one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that you have. I was young and adventuresome.
Breakthrough job: Becoming a brand manager at Kraft Foods on Balance Bar.
Major challenge: It's being a working mom. I have a daughter who's a year-and-a-half old, Alanna. I love the fact that I have an incredible balance, a very supportive husband, and I've had a lot of really great role models as a working mom, but it's still always tough and I think that any working mom can probably relate to that. ... It's making time for everything that you want to do, spending enough quality time with my daughter.
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Q. What are your responsibilities at A&B?
I work on the corporate operating plans, and I work on special projects within development.
Q. What did you do at Kraft Foods in New York as brand manager before coming to Hawai'i?
A. I had a couple of different brands I was involved with while I was there. I worked on a small brand called Handi-Snacks — they have cheese and crackers and pudding. I worked on Jell-O pudding, which is one of the very, very large brands within Kraft. I did that for about a year and a half. I worked on Balance [Bar] for about two years and then I also worked on Breyers yogurt as brand manager. At Kraft they move you around a lot to be able to get the flavor of a lot of different businesses. ... During Balance in particular I worked on new products and that's exciting because you work on a product all the way from its idea stage all the way through to commercialization.
So everything that you develop, you kind of have an emotional attachment to the product because it's an idea that you kind of brought from beginning all the way through to the end. That was a very rewarding part of my time at Kraft.
One of the reasons that I wanted the job at A&B is the opportunity to be able to work in the development area, to be able to kind of apply some of those skills in terms of developing new businesses.
Q. What are A&B's biggest projects in the next year?
A. First off, the economic environment is definitely very promising and we have strong businesses, which is a great situation for someone to come into. We do have a strong balance sheet and that gives us financial flexibility to be able to do more and those are the type of things that, to be honest, I can't talk about. For our future in terms of A&B, you can look at Matson, which is a very strong company, unit volume that's growing. You can look at properties, which in terms of Wailea (Resort on Maui), the Hokua partnership (a joint develop-
ment with The MacNaughton Group and Kobayashi Group planned as a 250-unit condo in Kaka'ako), Kukui'ula partnership (with DMB Associates on a 1,500-home project in Po'ipu), are all really exciting things that are happening here. And I think that can be credited towards really good leadership. I have been really, really impressed by the corporate culture changes that I think are happening here in terms of leadership.
Q. What is the single most important thing you have learned in your career that could be applied at A&B?
A. The process of taking calculated risks. How to be able to look at the wealth of opportunities around you and figure out which ones make the most sense. ...
I think that there's a real opportunity to be able to sell food products here that equate well to the images that consumers have in their minds in terms of food. So something like our coffee business, Maui Brand and sugar is another example of specialty products, where you're able to market to travelers that come here so that they can have the brand follow them home. ... There's a lot of strong brands here in Hawai'i from a food product perspective. I think that Hawai'i branded coffee is an opportunity. I think there are opportunities in chocolate.
Q. What is an example of a time you took a calculated risk in your career?
A. Moving to China when I was 21. I recognized the risk that I was taking by doing that instead of taking a typical hotel job because I'd worked for a lot of the hotel chains back on the Mainland. And taking a job at a small restaurant in China, not for one of the big names, was a real risk but I looked into the future to understand what it would be able to give me personally and from a career standpoint and I thought that was a risk to be able to take. And that's something that is important to be able to look at in terms of opportunities, because we're always surrounded by more opportunities than we're able to take and it's a question of which ones make sense in the future.
Q. Who would you say are the masters that A&B serves?
A. A&B touches a lot of lives. It has an incredible history behind it. And that's something that people really look to here and it's not that we're stuck in our history, it's the fact that we're looking forward to it and it really is a helpful guiding force. It is impressive, and personally that's one of the reasons that I came to A&B, because of that strong history and what it means and how it touches individual lives. It's great to know that I'm part of the company that delivers the Christmas trees. ... There's a real appreciation of that role that we play in the lives of people in Hawai'i.
Q. What is the breakdown of A&B's businesses?
A. Properties, in terms of operating profit, is 46 percent. Transportation (Matson Navigation Co.) is 41 percent. And food products (Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co., Maui Brand, Kauai Coffee Co.), 13 percent.
Q. Do you think the sugar and coffee industries will always exist in Hawai'i?
A. I think it depends on what form. ... A&B does continue to invest in people and in capital within our agribusiness units but I think that everyone would agree that agriculture in Hawai'i has its challenges. What I can say as a brand manager is I think Maui Brand and sugar have great potential here.
