Hello, Hawaii.

After many years in the SF Bay Area, where I built a career in PR and marketing communications, I have returned to the Islands to be closer to family. During my first few weeks, I’ve reconnected with my local friends who, to my delight, are now running their own tech companies. In the spirit of generous Aloha, they have opened doors for me to meet the tech community here.

I am excited about what I see. Local tech companies are emerging and growing, and there's a palpable mood of optimism for this sector's emerging presence in the islands. The accelerators, government, and other stakeholders have laid the foundation to ensure these nascent tech companies become firmly established in the islands to create new job opportunities.

Here's an interesting stat: a recent Kauffman Growth Entrepreneurship Index report identified Hawaii as one the nation's innovation hotbeds. According to the report, the rate of startup growth in Hawaii is 126.2 percent, well ahead of the nation's 25 smaller states. Among those states, the Index placed Hawaii in the #2 slot for entrepreneurship growth, up from #11 last year. But how many people know that?

The innovations developed here in energy, agritech, biotech, and cleantech, for example, are solutions that the world sorely needs. I want to contribute in raising national awareness of game-changing technologies being invented here.

ZingPR recently opened a Honolulu office to help these local startups increase their visibility so they can reach their target audiences and attract capital, customers, partners, and talent. My partner, Tim Cox, and I have launched many tech startups in Silicon Valley, and worked in Bay Area enterprises such as Apple, Autodesk, Levi Strauss, and VMware.

We look forward to building relationships with our local business community so that we can shine the market light on some of Hawaii’s game-changers. Please feel free to contact me — I would love to hear what you’re up to and how we can do something great together.

Much mahalo,
Shirley

ps: you can read about ZingPR Hawaii in this story, which was just published in our local business journal, the Pacific Business News.