About this speaker
Mufi Hannemann has served Hawai‘i for decades in the public, private, and non-profit sectors with distinction given the plethora of international, national and local awards and honors that he has received over several decades. He was the first person of Samoan ancestry to attend Harvard where he excelled as a scholar-athlete and graduated with honors in 1976. He was elected Mayor of Honolulu in 2004 and was re-elected in 2008. This was preceded by being elected to the Honolulu City Council twice, during which he served as Chair. He has also been the director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism and was an executive with C. Brewer & Co.
He now serves as the president & CEO of the Hawai‘i Lodging & Tourism Association, the state’s largest and oldest private sector tourism organization.
He is the founder of the Pacific Century Fellows, modeled after the White House Fellows program in which he participated before serving on the staff of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush in 1983-1984.
In 2023, he was appointed by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo to the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board, whose members advise the Secretary of Commerce on how government policies and programs affect the travel and tourism industry and offer counsel on current and emerging issues.
