Last month, Ron Porter began a new role as president for Hawaiian Building Maintenance – which handles commercial facility maintenance with services from janitorial and engineering to HVAC, restoration and more, spanning 300 sites statewide.
Born and raised in Hawai‘i, he previously served as CFO of The Miranda Group and CEO of Tailored Capital. Though, Porter describes his career as “an evolving one.”
“I started in academics as a Professor of Economics in 2010 and taught for about five years. In the meantime, around 2011, I was introduced to the capital markets via the mining sector in Asia and North America, which slowly pulled me away from academics into the greater world of finance,” he shared in emailed responses to Aloha State Daily. “By 2016, I was fully out of academics and venturing further into the business acquisition space and then further into business operations as a necessity. My economics background, coupled with practical finance and business operations experience have formed a pretty cohesive and comprehensive foundation for stewarding a business the size of HBM.”
Porter said that the rise of Artificial Intelligence continues to be a challenge across industries, and part of what initially drew him to HBM.
“I am lucky that while the need for my technical analytical skills has decreased due to AI, I have been put into positions of building and running businesses, which from those experiences hopefully maintains my relevance in the workforce. Moreover, as AI seems to be much slower in replacing jobs in the trades and skilled trades, the future of work looks to be in the trades and skilled trades, therefore, running a business such as HBM is ideal in that I can contribute to a company that is firmly rooted in the future of work.”
Porter’s top priorities as president are to continue the things that have worked for the company for more than 60 years, while keeping up with the changing landscape of building maintenance in Hawaiʻi. “As competition, technology, labor and supply chains are ever evolving, we need to keep the heart and soul of HBM intact as we evolve and navigate these changes,” he added.
HBM employs roughly 700 workers with core values in local knowledge and relationships, trusted to care for facilities with respect, reliability and integrity, per the company.
Looking ahead, Porter is excited to work with HBM's "extensive existing customer base to think through and collaborate on new ways to improve our services through updated labor models and supply chain efficiencies; and as for our workforce, we are excited to work with our community partners to build a solid pipeline of trades and skilled trades workers that ensures good jobs for our local communities.”
He continued, “HBM cares for the buildings that care for our communities, we will also work across the value creation spectrum to use our resources and expertise to do what we do best to maintain our community structures that contribute to healthier social outcomes rather than just financial outcomes.”
When asked what he’s been learning lately as a leader, Porter told ASD, “Leadership is only real if it is directly accompanied by sacrifice. Perceived leadership activities that do not incorporate sacrifice into the activity at hand are merely advisal.”
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Kelsey Kukaua Medeiros can be reached at kelsey@alohastatedaily.com.
