Fellows mentioned in this story: Meli James

From Pacific Business News:

PBN recently surveyed this year’s mentors about their careers and insights on entrepreneurship.

Here’s what two mentors had to say:

Meli James, co-founder, Mana Up

What set you on the path to pursue your career?
I was born and raised in Honolulu and attended Punahou School, then later went on to graduate from the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, class of 2000. In 2007, I founded my first company, Nirvino – No. 1 ranked wine app, an Apple Platform Top 100 App, and Top 10 Lifestyles App. I returned home to Hawai‘i in 2012 to help Hawai‘i startup accelerators, bringing them my Silicon Valley startup experience. In 2017, I joined forces with my now co-founder Brittany Heyd after realizing a need for Hawai‘i to diversify its economy. Together, we founded Mana Up, a local product accelerator and economic development initiative to help scale our local businesses headquartered in Hawaii to global markets. To date, we have seen a total of 74 companies graduate from our program, and this year we’ll be adding 10 more rising local companies to our ‘ohana.

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