Last year, when Pasifika in Tech held its first Pau Hana during Hawaiʻi Tech Week, more than 100 Pasifika professionals showed up. This year, on Sept. 3, the gathering returned to PEWA by Pono Potions on Bethel Street in downtown Honolulu for free, thanks to community sponsors.
What began as a one-off has become something sturdier: a sustained community with a reputation of its own in Hawaiʻi’s tech ecosystem.
The organizers, Indigenous tech professionals Sage Keʻalohilani Quiamno, Evan Naiʻaomana Castro, Lia Ikeda and Leimomi Bong, are clear about what Pasifika in Tech is not: a networking event with a Hawaiian-shirt theme slapped on it. It’s a hui, sustained by people who show up when it’s hard.
Castro, a Native Hawaiian energy executive and [2024] Pacific Business News' 40 Under 40 honoree, has spoken about growing up surrounded by “stereotypes that made Hawaiian identity feel limiting instead of powerful.” That instinct shapes how the group built the Pau Hana; relationships over networking, culture carried into the room.
“Last year, we didn’t know if this was a one-time thing or the start of something,” Ikeda said. “This year, watching people walk in already knowing each other, that’s when it clicked.”
Bong put it another way: “What people want, is to look around a room and see locals founding companies and sitting on panels building something that’s ours.”
That intention showed up in the space, from a Bay Area technologist ready to hire cybersecurity talent from the lāhui, to founders sharing AI-native products built for community.
“Seeing that many Pasifika technologists in one room was something I won’t forget. This community is using AI to do important work like protecting our moʻolelo and keeping sacred knowledge in Hawaiian hands,” shared Riley ʻIkelihiokalani Atkinson, a Kamehameha Schools alum now employed at software developer Scale AI.
“Working from the continent, this Pau Hana was energizing, and a reminder of how much innovation is happening right here in Hawaiʻi.”
What organizers keep hearing, unprompted, is that the Pau Hana event is what Hawaiʻi Tech Week was always supposed to be. The organizers are modeling the shift they want the industry to make — away from treating Pasifika and Native Hawaiian talent as a diversity checkbox and toward recognizing them as experts already doing the work the tech industry claims to need.
Who gets access, who defines “innovation,” and who benefits in Hawaiʻi isn’t solved by better outreach. It’s solved by handing decision-making and ownership to the people closest to the problem. That’s the quieter claim beneath the Pau Hana: not that community deserves a seat at the table, but that the table was already theirs to build.
Pasifika in Tech’s Pau Hana was one thread in a week wrestling with the same question: what does a sustainable tech career in Hawaiʻi look like? Workforce development nonprofit Piʻikū Co.’s State of Recruiting panel took it on directly. Tim Kamanā, a technical recruiter for Candid Health noted that the job market is flooded with AI-generated applications and commented, “AI can help you write a resume, but it can’t fake curiosity in an interview.”
Hawaiʻi Women in Tech’s panel picked up the thread with Quiamno and Miki Hardisty, CEO of Ōlelo Intelligence, a company offering AI-enabled voice analytics for auto repair shops. This panel was the first time Quiamno introduced herself with her full Hawaiian name, because having another Hawaiian in the room gave her the courage to share it.
None of this happens without a kahua (foundation) built quietly, year after year. The Paubox Kahikina Scholarship, founded by Hoala Greevy, is now in its eighth year with 78 Native Hawaiian scholars and a 2026 cohort of 16 haumāna headed to schools from UH Mānoa to MIT, celebrated annually with a Pau Hana at the Pacific Club.
What started as a grassroots effort is becoming an anchor: a resource hub, a hiring pipeline, and a gathering place for a community too often treated as an afterthought. As Quiamno put it: “The cost of community is inconvenience, but it’s worth the investment.”
Pasifika in Tech plans to continue hosting the Pau Hana each year, with a growing desire to connect with Pasifika professionals beyond our one hānau (birth place), as ThriveHI and Hawaiians in Tech build community on the continent.
Castro, Ikeda, Bong, and Quiamno say they’re just getting started.
Pasifika in Tech wishes to mahalo the following sponsors: Hawaiian Council, Purple Maiʻa Foundation, PEWA by Pono Potions, ʻUlu & Kalo Bakery, PAU Vodka, Waiākea, Lyft, HTDC, ThriveHI, and the Hawaiʻi Tech Week team. Learn more here: hawaiitechweek.com.
This article is reprinted with permission from OHA's Ka Wai Ola newspaper: "From a grassroots gathering to a puʻuhonua," by Pasifika in Tech in its October 2026 issue, Vol. 43 No. 10. Read more at kawaiola.news.
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