Q. You've had a meteoric career at the Bishop Museum in just three years — from head of the Bishop Museum Press to vice president of sales and marketing to the new title of vice president of public operations.

A. This is my second time around here at the museum. I was under the previous director, Donald Duckworth, from 1999 to 2000 as a grant writer and development officer for about a year. We were working on a book about historic images of Hawai'i with a company called Mutual Publishing. They offered me a job, and I decided to go into book publishing. I guess I didn't burn my bridges because the new director, Bill Brown, came in and decided to start up the inactive Bishop Museum Press again, and I came back in 2003. The Bishop Museum Press is the oldest book publishing house in Hawai'i and one of the oldest scholarly publishing houses in the Western hemisphere. But it had fallen inactive and most people in Hawai'i don't know its pedigree, which has published some of the most important books in Hawaiian literature.

We had never done children's books, so I established a children's book line of about five children's books per year that's growing. We expanded the Hawaiian language book line and are now the world's largest publisher of Hawaiian language books. In 24 months, we went from dead last to fifth largest publisher in the state out of about 20 publishers. Now we hover around 25 to 30 publications, most of them new, including a new book on the Hawaiian martial art of lua that's doing really well. We're now one of the few natural history museum publishing operations in the country that makes money. We've attacked the revenue side by creating better-looking books and better-priced books and better distribution, and you attack the cost side by printing outside of the United States, from Australia to throughout Asia, and that's what every publisher does in Hawai'i.

Q. Then you had the title of senior director of sales and marketing for just three months.

A. I retained the press and was given responsibility for the retail shops, our visitor industry sales, PR and marketing for the museum and admissions and events and facility rentals and sales and marketing for our two subsidiary operations. As of July, I became head of public operations. I kept all of the new responsibilities, but the new title reflects what we're trying to do to educate and help people.

Q. What can visitors expect from the Bishop Museum in the coming months and years?

A. We're building a visitor's center on our Big Island property. On the main campus, we want to increase access to what's going on behind the scenes to show the depth of our collections. We're the fourth largest natural history museum in the United States and the largest in the Pacific. We've closed Hawaiian Hall for its most comprehensive renovation, and we're going to re-install the original art gallery that was in the building that got taken away because of environmental conditions. Hopefully we'll re-open the entire structure in mid-2008.

We went to the very best in the world, Ralph Applebaum out of New York, who did the Holocaust Museum, Bill Clinton's library, the American and Natural History Museum. We've asked him to couple his expertise with the museum's staff, board members and Hawaiian stakeholders and community leaders and translate that into exhibits. It's going to be a complete renewal of how we display Hawaiian culture. In the end, we'll have over double the amount of stuff in a three-story building that will be uniquely Hawaiian, maybe 4,000 pieces.

Q. One of the themes of your career seems to be maximizing things that haven't been appreciated or at least underutilized.

A. By chance or luck, I've always found the diamond in the rough. I love the challenge of turning around something that needs a lot of work.

Q. How do you do that at an institution like the Bishop Museum, where veteran employees have been through controversy, funding problems and political turmoil in the recent past?

A. I come from a humble background and the Australian attitude is pretty informal, so people can get to know about me, for better or worse. There always used to be a line between senior management and staff. So I tell people that my job is not to be your boss. My job is to be your advocate at the senior management table. But I try to do little things, too. We have monthly all-staff meetings, and I changed the menu from basic pastries, water and coffee. I said, "Let's kick it up a notch." We now offer a full breakfast of fruit and rice and bacon. It doesn't seem like a lot, but these are big moves for the museum.

Q. Outside of the museum, you also helped start the Hawaii Book and Music Festival in April on the grounds of Honolulu Hale.

A. I'm concerned with literacy in Hawai'i. One out of four adults in Hawai'i is functionally illiterate, which means they can't read past a fifth-grade level.

Every major city in the United States has a book festival except Honolulu. I was president of the Hawaii Book Publishers Association, and they'd always wanted to do something. The first year we had 10,000 people turn out and over 200 authors, a children's stage, a music stage, a cooking stage, poetry slams. Most festivals don't make a dime. We not only broke even but just last week had check cutting ceremonies for $5,000 to the two beneficiaries of our festival, Read to Me International and Hawai'i Literacy. Now we want to do it every year.

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.