When Nick Winfrey joined Imua Onipāʻa as executive director earlier this year, he was most excited to help build upon something new. He previously served as president of Maui United Way.
“I saw a niche puzzle piece that could really solve some long-term issues I’ve seen here and in the nonprofit sector as a whole,” he told Aloha State Daily. “[But it was] also seeing what could be in decades to come, the impact of this kind of work.”
According to Winfrey, the missing piece is employment pathways for mid-career professionals. To address this need, the goal of the Maui-based organization is to expand workforce training and community resilience programs statewide.
In response to the 2023 Maui wildfires, Imua Onipāʻa was established by Gary Albitz, its managing director, who is a retired technology executive and lecturer at the University of Hawaiʻi Maui College.
Last month, one new board of directors and five new advisory board members were named. Click here to meet the full team.
“Our leadership team embodies Imua Onipāʻa’s meaning — to move forward with steadfast purpose,” Albitz said in a Nov. 21 statement. “Together, we’re creating lasting partnerships that strengthen Hawaiʻi’s economy and empower local families.”
The organization offers a variety of services across sectors through workforce development cohorts, mentorship and upskilling to technical training with real-world skills. It is funded by individual gifts and grants.
Existing partners so far include Adobe, Salesforce, Intuit and more.
Aloha State Daily spoke with Winfrey to learn more about Imua Onipāʻa’s programs and priorities now and into the future.
Who are your programs intended? It’s really those mid-career individuals, but we do have some one-off programming that we can support at-risk youth, for example, in addition to Native Hawaiians, those recent graduates just out of college, exiting veterans. I’m a veteran myself … We can’t teach security clearance jobs, but we can offer a lot of the other things to place those individuals in high paying jobs. So really, it's walking side by side an individual, understanding their passions and expertise, informing and education them about what the opportunities are as a sales engineer or in customer service or project management. A lot of individuals have those skills, we just have to upskill them in certain areas.
What does a typical cohort experience look like? We’re actually going to be opening up another cohort here in January. Basically, the cohort will come together for some specific training like projects management or public speaking. Each individual is mentored by a career expert in the areas they’re going to thrive in. We help them get additional certifications and implement technologies so they have that real world experience on resumes. As we grow in this, we realize it’s not one-size-fits-all. It’s one-on-one. And that’s what makes it really unique; it’s not something that you can replicate easily but we’re building out those models so that we can hopefully replicate as we get more and more individuals through the program.
What are your current goals? One is sustained funding. It’s amazing that we have the initial resources to get everything off the ground. But how do we build out sustained resource modeling to make sure we can continue operations? Two is volunteers and mentors; the experts and partners we want to bring in. We’re working diligently on a pipeline for cohort members to offer it to larger groups (currently about 10-15 individuals). Another big goal that we have is to bring Native Hawaiians back home who want to come home with an actual living wage and a home they can thrive in.
What have you been learning lately as a leader? I learn something new every day. ... As a community leader, I’m realizing that there’s always going to be a crisis within our communities. And that’s not something that I wanted to learn, but it’s something I’ve come to accept. So it’s just how can we support the community through whatever crisis we’re in right now. Especially in Hawaiʻi, that’s what the community is able to do – people come together and help each other out. That’s what keeps me going on a daily basis. Itʻs always community first.
Interested in learning more about Imua Onipāʻa? Email Winfrey at nick@imuaonipaa.org.
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Kelsey Kukaua Medeiros can be reached at kelsey@alohastatedaily.com.
