Fellows mentioned in this story: Shelee Kimura, Cohort V

From Honolulu Magazine:

She didn’t realize it at the time, but Shelee Kimura could say that her professional development started at age 4, in the most unexpected of places: hula class.

By the time she was 8, she was dancing in competitions and practicing four hours a day, five days a week. By college, hula was all-encompassing for Kimura, who performed all over the world. Those experiences would teach her priceless lessons about hard work, perseverance, commitment, cultural integrity and the value of Hawai‘i—lessons that continue to inform the way she thinks about her life, her children’s lives and the impact she can have on the Islands’ future.

Today, as the CEO of Hawaiian Electric Co., much of her focus is on sustainability, how the community uses energy and how it approaches energy-efficiency. And Kimura, who took over as CEO in January, has her work cut out for her with a seriously big inherited goal: for HECO to achieve 70% decarbonization by 2030, with zero carbon emissions from power generation by 2045. This past year, renewable energy accounted for 38% of HECO’s energy output; in 2010, that rate was just 10%. So Kimura’s taking over at HECO right when the fight to transition Hawai‘i away from a reliance on fossil fuels is really getting interesting.

Continue reading at honolulumagazine.com