AlohaCare
Francoise Culley-Trotman, CEO
This nonprofit health plan has grown rapidly in recent years, now seeing annual revenues of more than $500 million. In March 2021, the state of Hawaii selected AlohaCare as one of the managed care organizations to administer Medicaid health insurance coverage in the state. From 2020 to 2021, membership grew 28% from just under 63,000 to nearly 81,000.
On the innovation front, AlohaCare has joined UniteHawaii’s technology platform to better direct members to needed social services, a platform that both tracks outcomes and measures impacts.
Recently, the Institute of Medicaid Innovation has singled out two of its programs as “exemplary” — Hooikaika Na Kumu Waiwai Ola, which brings cultural strategies to improve Native Hawaiian health, and Mana Mama Healthy Babies Coalition partnership, featuring mobile clinics that bring “culturally anchored and informed care” to socially high-risk infants and pregnant women.
Website: alohacare.org
Hawaii State Federal Credit Union
Andrew Rosen, president and CEO
n 2022, the credit union has been thinking big by thinking small, launching microbranches to leverage digital financial solutions. The first microbranch opened in Safeway’s Kapahulu location, with three more planned this year for Safeways in Hawaii Kai, Kailua and Kihei, Maui.
These microbranches mix technology, design and personnel to provide banking services in a 300-square-foot space. One key to this is the new ITM’s, or interactive teller machines. With these, customers can perform a wider range of activities than they’d normally do with a teller, freeing up staff to concentrate on financial advice and strategic planning with clients, including enrolling them in digital banking.
At the Kapahulu Safeway location, some 90% of transactions are handled through the ITM and nearly 70% of new credit union members are enrolling in digital banking, taking the credit union a step closer to its goal of being 100% paper free.
Website: hawaiistatefcu.com
BLAZER
Hawaiian Telcom
Su Shin, president and general manager
Innovation isn’t possible without the infrastructure to support it, so Hawaiian Telcom seemed the natural choice as our “blazer” in the category of innovation in Daily Life.
In 2021, just as Hawaii settled into Year Two of the work-from-home experience, Hawaiian Telcom invested more than $100 million to extend the latest generation of ultra-fast fiber-optic broadband directly to 30,000 more homes and businesses statewide. This “fiber-to-the-premise” (FTTP) internet service that the utility has dubbed Fioptics is meant to “future-proof Hawaii for generations to come,” the company said.
And the roll-out isn’t over yet. According to Hawaiian Telcom, more than 215,000 Hawaii homes and businesses have access to Fioptics today, with another 50,000 to be connected to the service by year’s end, with more than half of the locations on the Neighbor Islands.
To further close the digital divide, Hawaiian Telcom was selected by the state Department of Transportation to provide free WiFi service in underserved neighborhoods in the state’s HI Connect Broadband Pilot program. The free WiFi has already been established in four Kalihi public housing neighborhoods, along with a help desk offering support in English, Hawaiian, Chuukese, Marshallese, Ilocano and Tagalog.
Bright Light Digital
Mark Tawara, owner
Founded in 2016 by serial entrepreneur Mark Tawara, Bright Light Digital originally focused on bringing digital menu boards, advertising displays and interactive kiosks to businesses. During the Covid lockdowns and restrictions, Tawara saw an opportunity to meet the then-ubiquitous need for temperature checks by businesses while combining the technology with digital signage. He invested tens of thousands of dollars in 2020 researching and procuring an all-in-one technology that could provide both temperature checks and digital signage, patenting the name “BrightScan.” This timely innovation led the company to a record year in terms of revenues, profits and staff growth.
Bright Light Digital immediately shared some of that success with the community by, for example, donating BrightScan devices to nonprofits that relied on bringing people together to serve the community, such as Diamond Head Theatre and The Pantry by Feeding Hawaii Together. Tawara, who originally nurtured the company at the Manoa Innovation Center, also donated funds to The Residences for Innovative Student Entrepreneurs, or RISE, project by the UH Shidler College of Business and Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship, helping the future innovation center buy furniture and equipment.
The Sommelier’s Box
Aubrey Wood, owner and founder
Countless Hawaii businesses quickly learned to pivot to digital during the Covid lockdowns, by starting up or revamping web sites, social media and e-commerce tools to sell their products virtually. The Sommelier’s Box went the other way, launching in October 2021 entirely as an online business, aiming to disrupt the retail wine industry model in Honolulu by offering subscription boxes of wine shipped straight to customers’ homes.
Founder Aubrey Wood sources sommelier-recommended wines from around the world, combining wine education and shopping online at thesommbox.com. Curated boxes of four wines range from $120 to $220. If you fall in love with one, additional individual bottles can be purchased, as well.
