Alumni

Under the Sea: Into Challenger Deep

April 12, 2021

Nicole Yamase '14 and Victor Vescovo during Challenger Deep expidition — *^{Nicole Yamase and Victor Vescovo}*

Have you ever wondered what secrets can be found at the ocean’s deepest depths?

So has Nicole Yamase ’14. And then she got to travel there.

In March, Yamase was invited to jump into a special submersible and journey 35,856 feet below the waves (or as she likes to say, about 700 coconut trees stacked on top of one another) into the Challenger Deep—the deepest known spot in the ocean, located in the Mariana Trench.

Yamase, who is Micronesian, is the first Pacific Islander ever to make the trip.

She describes the place as nothing less than “unbelievable”—like an alien world.

“Once we slowly got to the bottom, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she said, adding that the expedition down with ocean explorer Victor Vescovo—who organized the special dive—started about 10 AM. Four hours later, they were there, staring into the murky, dark and deepest known depths of the ocean.

“It looks like a desert down there,” Yamase said.

Reinforcing passion for environmental studies

Yamase, who graduated from Chaminade with a B.S. in Environmental Studies and a B.S. in Biology and is now seeking a doctoral degree in Marine Biology from the University of Hawai‘i, was chosen for the journey because of her deep passion and previous work in helping to advocate for the oceans.

Nicole Yamase '14 (BS Environmental Studies, BS Biology) doing field work

Vescovo, she said, “thought it was time” that someone from the Federated States of Micronesia was invited down to the Challenger Deep, which can be found in their country’s waters. And not just “someone” was chosen, but a young leader who is studying diverse marine ecosystems.

She got additional support for the journey from the Waitt Institute and Micronesia Conversation Trust.

Yamase said the experience of traveling to Challenger Deep was life-changing. It confirmed the incredible love she has for her research—she’s focused on studying the impacts of climate change on indigenous macroalgae important to Pacific reefs. And it underscored her other major academic focus: raising awareness about how climate change and rising sea levels are already impacting the Pacific.

“Humanity needs to improve its relationship with the world’s oceans,” Yamase said.

Because even the Challenger Deep wasn’t free of humanity’s fingerprint. When she was down there, nearly 7 miles below the surface, she saw boating tethers—human trash. “The fact that trash has made it all the way down to the deep is very alarming,” Yamase said. “It’s just a really pressing problem.”

Yamase knows that better than most.

Nicole Yamase '14 being a part of a beach clean up

Climate change is a problem now

When she returns to her hometown of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia, she sees the rising sea levels lapping up higher than they ever have before. Friends and loved ones post photographs on social media of ocean water going into homes and of cemeteries being washed away.

Climate change isn’t a future problem for her country, she says, it’s a problem now.

And it will take everyone, including her generation and future ones, to fix it.

Opening doors for Pacific Islanders

“Through this expedition, I really just want to promote STEM—because Pacific Islanders, we need us,” Yamase said. “We’re the ones who are going to be in the field. We need local mentors, local role models because that’s what we lack. It really has a huge impact to see your own succeed in the field.”

Nicole Yamase '14 and Dr. Grail Grabowsky — *^{Dr. Gail Grabowsky and Nicole Yamase}*

As she continues to make her mark, Yamase is grateful to her own mentors, including those at Chaminade. She said it was Environmental Science and Studies Dr. Gail Grabowsky, dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, who encouraged her as a freshman to apply for a summer internship at UH-Mānoa focused on marine biology. “From that first experience, I was like, ‘oh my goodness, this is for me,’” she said. She continued to be selected for internships and other opportunities, including a chance to study macroalgae in Miami’s Biscayne Bay.

That research formed the basis of the dissertation she’s now working on.

She said Biology Professor Dr. Jolene Cogbill, her adviser in the department, was also hugely instrumental in getting her linked up with opportunities that honed her skills—and bolstered her confidence. “They both really pushed me out of my comfort zone,” she said. “My first year, I never raised my hand. I couldn’t do it. After these summer internships of really participating in these opportunities with other Pacific Islanders, I thought, ‘I’m not alone in this.’”

Nicole Yamase '14 showcasing her research at Chaminade's event in 2012

Yamase said she also got the chance to present her work at conferences and symposia.

She said she hopes to be that same inspiration to other young Pacific Islanders, especially those in environmental science, marine conservation and biology. She said her expedition into the Challenger Deep “was such a great opportunity to show young Pacific Islanders that we can do it.”

“There’s not that many of us in the science fields. Hopefully, this opens up doors.”

Returning Home to Chaminade

March 19, 2021

Dr. Lupita Ruiz-Jones, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Chaminade University, wants students to plan their careers with intention, so they end up doing work they love.

The key, she says, is pursuing and doing the things you are interested in, even when you don’t know where they will lead. After all, that’s what worked for her.

She was in high school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when she learned about Chaminade University at a college fair. “I don’t think I ever would have heard of Chaminade except for that booth.”

She wanted to study human impacts on the environment, and she wanted to move away from the desert. Chaminade offered a major in environmental studies, and she was sold.

Seeking out opportunities and going after them has been a life-long pattern for Ruiz-Jones. It’s especially impressive when you learn she was raised by parents who didn’t complete college in a family without the trappings of success.

Her mother was always supportive but struggled with bipolar disorder. Ruiz-Jones’ father went to prison when she was 12, which she says had a significant impact on her. “I really appreciated the ability to choose where I put my attention,” she says.

In one of her first classes, Dr. Gail Grabowsky, now dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, told the students it was great they were there. “She told us, ‘You’re going to love what you do, you’ll make an impact, but you’re not going to become rich.’”

“That was fine with me,” says Ruiz-Jones. “I felt like as long as I loved what I did and made an impact, that was what was important to me.”

During her freshman year, she applied and was selected for a five-week summer program in India. “The goal of that trip was to see what small non-profits were doing in India,” she says. “It was really about human well-being and the different ways people were contributing by doing service to the really poor. It was an incredible experience.”

But the summer after her sophomore year at Chaminade, she started doing undergraduate research at Kewalo Marine Lab. That’s where she first got excited about biology and organisms in coral reefs.

Dr. Lupita Ruiz-Jones, professor and alumna

At the end of her summer research at Kewalo Marine Lab, her advisor Dr. Mike Hadfield invited her to continue there in an internship. He also encouraged her to take all the science courses she could, which pushed her into a fifth year of college.

She didn’t mind, though, because she wanted to participate in a Sea Education Association summer-at-sea sailing program that focused on environmental studies. She spent four weeks sailing from Hawai‘i to San Francisco on a tall ship sailboat.

“Wow, that was a really powerful experience,” she says. “We did biological oceanography research. I focused my project on invertebrates that live on the surface out in the middle of the ocean.”

After graduating from Stanford University with her PhD, she received the Thinking Matters Teaching Fellowship and spent four years team-teaching there. That, she says, is where she developed her identity as a teacher and her love for teaching.

During the summers, she started collaborating with scientists at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology.

That’s how she ended up back at Chaminade, as an assistant professor this time, in Fall 2020.

Right now, she says, her goals are to find ways to integrate her passion for research, coral reef ecology, and restoration into her teaching. And she’d love to take students on field trips to neighbor islands or other Pacific islands. “If we could do something like that where we took students to more remote Pacific Islands for environmental education, that’d be very cool.”

Service in Action, A Peace Corps Volunteer’s Story

March 12, 2021

“When I’m older, I want to join the Peace Corps.”

Her uncle’s stories of the Peace Corps, living in a faraway place called Togo (West Africa) among people very different from him yet who became lifelong friends, had captured the imagination of Alice Potter ’18, a precocious 4-year-old. It was in her blood.

Potter and her family grew up in California while her father worked as a software engineer, and they also spent years living abroad, in Italy, Germany and France. Returning to the United States for college was never part of Potter’s plan; however, her mother did an internet search for colleges in the U.S. “with a good record of acceptance and graduation rates,” and Chaminade University of Honolulu popped up. The positive reviews about Chaminade’s student-to-faculty ratio, affordable tuition, overall quality, coupled with its location and Hawai‘i’s mild weather, all sounded very appealing. Her mother told her that if she got in, she would be going to the Marianist university. And to Potter’s surprise, the acceptance letter came. She was anxious to be going back to the U.S. and of all places the most remote 50th state.

There’s no place like Hawai‘i

Intimidated at first, she soon made new friends and began thriving in Chaminade’s customized learning experience. She also shared its values of serving the community by volunteering at the Waikīkī Aquarium. Aside from her studies, Potter also fell in love with Hawai‘i’s marine life and flora and enjoyed learning about the islands’ rich history. “Never before had I encountered a place so profoundly connected to its people like in Hawai‘i,” she says.

Living her dream of joining the Peace Corps

Alice Potter '18 with her counterpart in the Peace Corps — *^{Alice with her counterpart Mrs. Irma}*

Potter graduated with a bachelor’s in communication degree with an environmental studies minor in 2018. At age 23, ready for a new adventure, she jumped at the opportunity to live her dream and join the Peace Corps. Because she spoke conversational French, Potter had hoped to be assigned to Africa specifically in Senegal; however, there was an opening to teach English in Southeast Asia. She had lived in a variety of places, yet she remembers experiencing culture shock when arriving in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country with more than 267 million people with a Muslim majority. She was immediately struck by the language barrier and the lack of personal space in this bustling yet conservative, spiritual society.

The Peace Corps helps new volunteers acclimate to their new country through an intensive two to three months Pre-Service Training (PST) program. Potter explains this included language lessons, cultural classes, as well as learning about Peace Corps procedures and the country’s rules and local customs, providing the skills and knowledge you need to thrive on your own. During this time, she lived with the first of three host families.

“My host family during PST was especially kind, patient, helpful and accepting, and I became very close to them,” Potter says. Her host family warmly welcomed her into their home, introducing Potter to many delicious Indonesian dishes, such as sate (marinated meat skewers), cap cai (stir-fried vegetables sometimes mixed with meat), nasi goring (fried rice) and rawon (beef soup), which became her favorite. Potter was relieved that one of her host twin sisters, Dhea, spoke English, helping her with the transition and translating for her twin, Adhe, and their parents.

Once her assignment began, Potter lived with two other host families: a single mother with grown children, a driven career woman who worked as a caterer for weddings and funerals, as well as a seamstress and a make-up artist; and a young couple who introduced her to carp rearing, bird catching and coffee time. A neighboring family acted as her “mom and dad” when Potter needed adult assistance and they took her on day trips.

Teaching is learning

Potter was assigned to a vocational training high school near East Java, where she taught English to 15 to 18-year-old students, 85 percent of them male and the rest female. School was held seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with extracurricular activities held on Saturdays. Potter says she taught two or three classes each day; class periods were two hours long for sophomores and juniors and one hour for seniors. The school offered career paths for students in fields such as auto mechanics, electrical work, computer work and broadcasting.

Alice Potter '18 with her students while in the Peace Corps

“Most of the time my students called me ‘Mister,’ or ‘mbak’ or ‘kak,’ which is equivalent to saying young miss or older sibling,” explains Potter. “I was the youngest teacher at the school,” she adds.

Halfway through her service, Potter was riding her bicycle back to school after a lunch break when she was hit by a motorcycle from behind. “Even though I was wearing a helmet, I had a pretty serious concussion. A piece of asphalt got inside one of the helmet vents and cut my scalp,” she says. “I also had cuts on my upper lip, under my eye and the edge of my forehead and some gashes along the right side of my face, arms and legs. Fortunately, I only needed stitches,” she adds.

The Peace Corps kept her in the capital for a few weeks for regular check-ups at the hospital. When she returned to school, she smiles as she remembers how the entire community—her host family, students and teachers—all offered to drive her home so she wouldn’t have to walk. “Student after student kept begging me to ride home with them,” she says with a laugh. The community was close-knit, reminding her of her ‘ohana at Chaminade.

“The insight I gained from the students was invaluable,” she readily admits. As a teacher’s assistant, Potter adds she learned so much more from her students than she could have ever imagined. “My students taught me patience and acceptance. They also taught me to acknowledge the cultural differences of education in Indonesia versus in the U.S. and that young adults, no matter where you are in the world, want to be heard. It was amazing to watch them blossom,” Potter says. Their hospitality and intelligence impressed her day in and day out.

Potter learned to speak English, French, Italian and German while growing up and could now count Bahasa Indonesian as her fifth language.

A lasting impact

Alice Potter '18 with her fellow faculty members while in the Peace Corps

The Peace Corps profoundly changed Potter’s life. She learned the importance of keeping an open mind and welcoming others from different backgrounds with appreciation and understanding. While the Peace Corps may not be for everyone, Potter believes everyone could benefit from broadening their perspective by experiencing other cultures. “Immersing yourself in a different country with a foreign language and culture will humble you, and you’ll learn so much about yourself,” she confesses. “The Peace Corps was a beautiful, eye-opening experience that made a lasting impact,” she adds.

Potter keeps in touch with her first host family and hopes to go back to Indonesia as soon as it’s safe to do so. Saya meninggalkan sesuatu istimewa. “I left behind something special,” she translates.

What’s next?

After her 27-month stint in the Peace Corps, Potter moved back to California. Today, she continues to serve youth by teaching part-time in an after-school program. What’s next for Potter? She hopes to put her communication degree to use and strive toward her next goal of becoming a producer or film director.

Coming Full Circle

March 10, 2021

Kristine Stebbins ‘87 remembers completing a long list of internships as a Communication undergraduate at Chaminade, including the one that would launch her whirlwind career and eventually bring her back to the islands for an executive role created expressly for her.

Kristine Stebbins '87, senior vice president and director of digital experience innovation and technology at Bank of Hawai'i

Stebbins was recently named senior vice president and director of digital experience innovation and technology at Bank of Hawai’i. The position is an opportunity for the longtime marketing entrepreneur—who has been breaking ground in the industry for decades—to come full circle, returning to the place where she met her husband, attended college and began to build her marketing philosophy.

She described her work at Bank of Hawai’i as “one of those awesome roles.”

“I have the opportunity to look five years down the line at the ways we’re planning to build these amazing digital experiences,” she said, adding that digital innovation is an exciting and growing area of the banking sector that has been put on a fast-track because of the pandemic. “Today when you’re looking at marketing in particular, you need to think of yourself as a marketing technologist.”

Stebbins said her projects at Bank of Hawai’i have allowed her to bring her marketing and digital innovation expertise to bear to create excellent digital customer experiences. Stebbins joined Bank of Hawai’i full-time after previously serving as a consultant for the company, including on a key digital transformation project that helped put the institution on the right footing for the pandemic.

In other words, she was designing for the future.

And that was a role she was completely comfortable with. After all, Stebbins likes to say the only constant in marketing is change. Every five years or so, there’s a big disruption in the industry—the kind of seismic shifts that companies can learn to dread. Great marketing strategy, she says, is about harnessing those moments and using them to create new opportunities to reach customers.

“The pandemic has been a moment where it’s basically made digital interactions in banking a requirement,” she said. “So we’re trying to build out digital experiences that bring humans together.”

Her message to young marketing professionals is one she learned early on, too, including as a Chaminade student: Be ready for those moments of disruption by embracing adaptability and change.

A start in Hawai’i—and at Chaminade

Kristing Stebbins '87 at her Chaminade graduation

Indeed, change has defined some of the biggest moments in her life.

Stebbins secured her first position in marketing with an internship, which she acquired through Chaminade, at top-rated advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather. She worked in their Honolulu office and got hired shortly after graduation. It was a dream come true.

It was also far from the life she’d imagined for herself just a few years earlier.

Stebbins had first come to Hawai’i with no intention of staying. She was visiting for the summer to spend time with her brother, who was in the Navy. Stebbins would take the bus into town and then back to Makakilo. And it was at a bus stop at Ala Moana Center that she met her future husband.

Kristine Stebbins '87 with her husband John Stebbins

She’d asked him for directions and the two ended up spending the day together. And then summer together. When it came time to head back home to Texas, she did—and he followed. John Stebbins ended up driving her to the East Coast to drop her off at college and then going back to the islands.

A semester later, it was Kristine Stebbins who was knocking on his door. She’d transferred to Chaminade University and he enrolled a short time later. They were both taking classes together and would graduate within a year of one another. They married in 1988 at Seabury Hall on Maui.

Stebbins says she is still grateful to have transferred to Chaminade, and not just to be closer to her husband-to-be. She said Chaminade offered a more individualized experience and gave her access to opportunities she wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else. She counts her experiences at the University as central to setting her up for success and can still rattle off the names of some of the professors who served as her Chaminade mentors, including Communications Professor Dr. Mary Jude Yablonsky.

In addition to an internship at Ogilvy & Mather, Stebbins also worked at Chaminade’s student newspaper and the radio station and secured an internship at Hawai’i Public Television. She says of her mentors at Chaminade, “Obviously, they stuck with me.” Speaking to Chaminade Magazine, she added, “They were so supportive. They really guided me and encouraged me to get that real-life experience.”

Kristine Stebbins '87 with Dr. Mary Jude Yablonsky — *^{Kristine Stebbins ’87 with Dr. Mary Jude Yablonsky}*

Experience, she said, that was invaluable. It gave her an opportunity to apply what she’d learned in classrooms in a real-world setting—doing everything paid employees were doing—and she was hooked.

After graduation, Stebbins and her husband stayed in Hawai’i for several years, building their careers.

And then they headed to the mainland, moving to new cities—San Francisco, New York City, Seattle—as new opportunities emerged. Stebbins worked as global account director for IBM, senior marketing manager at Microsoft, and as a marketing consultant to some of the world’s biggest brands.

She also started her own marketing company, which she later sold.

All the while, the two maintained a strong connection to Hawai’i, especially after their daughter was born. (She’s now a junior in high school.) John Stebbins still has family in the islands, and this is where they one day saw themselves returning. They didn’t think it would be quite so soon, Stebbins said.

But then, as she often says, embrace change—because it’s inevitable.

During the pandemic, Stebbins started to assess her life and her work. She realized she’d been doing the work she wanted to do already, with Bank of Hawai’i. Fast forward several months and they were offering her a position, a new digital innovation role at the company created just for her.

She joined the bank in September, taking the first step in transitioning her family back to Hawai’i.

‘The world is definitely changing’

In addition to a passion for marketing, Stebbins is committed to helping the next generation. She believes strongly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education programs, especially those targeted at young girls. She’s even coached a Robotics team for the Girl Scouts.

Stebbins is also proud to work for a Hawai’i company with a strong commitment to diversity—and no shortage of women in executive positions. Things weren’t always that way in executive suites, she said, and in some places they still aren’t. In fact, Stebbins recalls that when she first started out at Ogilvy & Mather she couldn’t speak at meetings with major clients even when she was a topic’s expert.

“You laugh now because it’s so outrageous but is indicative of the experience in terms of how far we’ve come,” she said, adding that there have been many times in which she was the only woman in a boardroom. Her advice if they underestimate you: Let them—so you can prove them wrong.

“Quite frankly, I’m pretty smart and I know what I’m talking about,” she said, adding young women entering the business now may not face all the same barriers she faced but will undoubtedly face some of them. “You need to be confident in your abilities. It’s all a matter of being true to who you are.”

Plus, she added, “The good news is the world is definitely changing.”

And Stebbins is all in for that.

Leader at the Bottom of an Inverted Pyramid

March 5, 2021

Nothing can quite prepare you for the kind of unparalleled economic crisis the world saw as the coronavirus shut down so many aspects of daily life, locking down cities, shuttering stores and bringing tourism to a standstill. But there’s no doubt Anthony Shipp, MBA ‘19 was more prepared than most.

Anthony Shipp, MBA '19 (President and CEO of M. Dyer Global)

Shipp is a Marine veteran who served three combat tours in the Middle East—so he knows a little something about overcoming adversity. During the Great Recession, he was a business owner who saw revenues plummet and the economy go topsy-turvy—so he knows about the importance of preparing for a rainy day, too. And going into the pandemic, as president and CEO of M. Dyer Global, Shipp also knew he’d be relying on his decades of experience in logistics, IT and managing through crisis.

That doesn’t mean 2020 was smooth sailing for Shipp or his logistics, freight forwarding and international relocation company, by any stretch. But he’s grateful to have ended the year in a strong position, even while the industry—and many of his competitors—suffered major losses.

Anthony Shipp, MBA '19 (President and CEO of M. Dyer Global) with his crew

And he attributes his successes to understanding the importance of acting quickly, taking a few calculated risks and staying true to his servant leadership style. He also takes lifelong learning seriously and says the mentor and peer relationships he built throughout his career, including as a graduate student at Chaminade, have helped him stay on top of—or in front of—market trends.

“Nobody would have been able to predict this—everything that’s happened,” Shipp said, in a recent interview with Chaminade Magazine, adding that remaining adaptable and nimble have proven essential to surviving as the economy only now starts a slow and painstaking recovery process.

“As a business leader, you need to be prepared for change at all times.”

In fact, when the pandemic first started, Shipp turned his office into a “war room,” gathering his senior leaders to prioritize top projects and prepare for the rocky days ahead. One lesson he learned during the Great Recession, which was solidified in Chaminade’s MBA program, was a seemingly simple one: “cash is king.” So in those early days of the pandemic, he did everything he could to free up cash in his company and prepare for the worst. It was the right move, his first of many amid the crisis.

Weathering the crisis

Shipp likes to say that he’s never really taken a direct route to anything before.

Not to logistics. Not to leadership. Not even to Hawai’i.

Straight out of high school, at just 17 years old, he enrolled in the Marines and later completed his undergraduate degree in computer science at Chapman University. After leaving active duty, he worked in IT then moved to operations and eventually worked his way up to management. But he had to put his career on hold several times to serve his country. While in the reserves, he got called to active duty three times, serving two combat tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan before leaving the service.

That was in 2006, the same year Shipp designed to open his own trucking and logistics business.

“I had big dreams and aspirations,” he said, and they were quickly tempered by the 2008 economic crash. Shipp said he nearly lost his business in the downturn, but was able to keep it afloat and then see it become profitable again as the economy improved. He ended up selling the business around 2010.

It was about that time that he took a well-deserved sabbatical to Hawai’i, getting his first taste of the islands and the aloha spirit. Two years later, he would move to the state permanently—and quickly start to learn about the unique logistical and regulatory challenges Hawai’i companies face.

He became first the chief technology officer and then the chief commercial officer at Hawai’i Transfer Company, Ltd., a family-owned transportation services business. He was also able to revolutionize their operations, bringing in new efficiencies and successfully wooing big national accounts.

Opportunity knocks

Shipp was happy where he was, but opportunity came knocking on his door. An executive search firm sought him out to see if he was interested in taking the helm at M. Dyer. It was an opportunity he couldn’t turn down. And so in August 2017, he took over as the company’s president and CEO.

About that same time, Shipp was just starting his Master of Business Administration program at Chaminade. “I was in my early 40s and I was coming into a program traditionally for students to learn and gain knowledge,” he said. “I was approaching it from a different student perspective.” And it was a perfect fit.

Shipp said Chaminade’s MBA allowed him to build on his foundation of knowledge and focus on academic areas where he wasn’t quite as strong, including finance. Shipp also found great value in the Hogan Entrepreneurial Program, hearing first-hand from Hawai’i executives about how they approach leadership, prepare for market ups and downs and set their companies up for successful futures.

Anthony Shipp, MBA 19 at his Chaminade University graduation

“I really loved it because I got to learn from them,” he said, adding he was able to build relationships with those entrepreneurs—along with professors in the program—that remain strong today. “I captured an enormous amount of knowledge and know-how from their perspective.”

That knowledge helped guide Shipp as he took his first steps as M. Dyer’s CEO, focusing first on learning everything he could about the business he now led and reshaping its culture from one in which employees worked in silos to one in which they felt like they were part of a team.

When 2020 started, Shipp was hitting his stride and preparing to craft a strategic vision for a quickly-evolving industry. And then, seemingly overnight, everything seemed to change. Relying on his experiences, Shipp knew two things: he had to prepare for the worst—and now.

So he gathered up his senior leaders to develop key strategies for weathering the crisis.

And in the weeks and months that followed, Shipp continued to remain out in front of the markets, doing everything he could to retain customers, attract new business and steel the company for more economic pain. One project that was put on a fast track: a plan to move to paperless transactions.

Before the pandemic, the company had a two-year timeline to become paperless to improve the customer experience and streamline the company’s processes. Because of the pandemic, with in-person transactions severely limited, the project was finished in months.

In business, Shipp said, “you have to be nimble. Be prepared that things are going to happen quickly.”

‘I’m here to serve everybody’

As a leader, Shipp imagines himself at the bottom of an inverted pyramid.

It’s a servant leadership approach in which Shipp serves as a guide, a mentor, a motivator and a relationship builder. “I sit at the bottom and I’m here to serve everybody,” Shipp said, adding that in working with his leadership and broader team he hammers out a project target and a timeline and then asks, “What do you need from me? How can I support you? How can I encourage and motivate you?”

Approaching leadership this way, he says, helps bolster empowerment and accountability. Employees know they can make mistakes, as long as they learn from them, in pursuit of shared business goals. They also see themselves as subject matter experts, which means they’re more likely to bring new and innovative ideas to the table and look for efficiencies across departments and the company.

Shipp, who is a Hogan Entrepreneur, says he frequently offers three pieces of advice to the next generation of business professionals: while in school, develop lifelong mentor relationships because good counsel is never overrated; never stop learning; and know the one constant in life is change.

“You’ve definitely got to be a lifelong learner,” said Shipp. “Don’t just encapsulate what you learn at school and think that it stops there. It sets the foundation, but you should constantly have this thirst to learn.” After all, Shipp enrolled in post-graduate studies in supply chain management at MIT after graduating with his MBA from Chaminade. And in September 2020, he completed an executive education program in freight transportation and logistics from Northwestern University.

As for professional relationships, those also come in handy in hiring decisions.

Anthony Shipp, MBA 19 with his employees

Shipp said he first met his vice president of business administration, Jana Paz, when the two were in Chaminade’s MBA program. (She graduated in 2018.) Shipp likes to say the company has a “little nucleus of Chaminade alum”—plus more than a few parents who have sent their children to the university.

That’s linked to M. Dyer’s identity, Shipp said, as a local business with a global reach. Shipp said he’s sought to ensure the aloha spirit and Hawai’i’s community-oriented values are baked right into M. Dyer’s brand. “We have this element of a family within our company’s soul,” Shipp said.

As a servant leader—situated at the bottom of that inverted pyramid—Shipp doesn’t only expect his company to embody the aloha spirit. He holds himself to the same standard. “Here in Hawai’i, the bigger picture is at the community level. We have to have the highest level of integrity of trust,” he said.

And from his experience, the rest will follow.

Discovering Passion and Purpose in the Family Business

February 27, 2021

Leading a company is a challenge at any age, but at just 27 years old, James Deleon Guerrero ’16 has taken on the role of Vice President at JM Holdings. He’s using what he learned at Chaminade and previous work experiences to grow the family business all while giving back to the local community.

A home away from home

For Saipan native Deleon Guerrero, Hawai‘i has been like a second home. While growing up, he accompanied his parents on their frequent business and leisure trips to O‘ahu each year including spending summers here. He became very comfortable being in Hawai‘i, with its culture and climate similar to Saipan’s, and pictured himself attending college in the Hawaiian Islands following graduation from high school.

He looked at the various college options on O‘ahu and was attracted to Chaminade University because of the great things he had heard about the private Marianist university from a college recruiter as well as from friends who had attended the school.

Testing the waters

In 2012, Deleon Guerrero arrived at Chaminade to pursue a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Like many Freshmen, he was away from home for the first time, on his own and also living off-campus. He readily admits his schoolwork suffered during his first semester and was humbled by his mistakes. Getting back on track, he joined a Marianas club and quickly found his ‘ohana, making new friends from all over including Guam.

Eager and ambitious, Deleon Guerrero pushed himself so that in his senior year, he only had two or three classes left to graduate. He is especially grateful for the close-knit environment at Chaminade that allowed him to easily make connections with his peers and professors. He credits his Chaminade professors for “preparing me for the real world.”

Graduating in 2016 with his business administration degree in hand, his first stint was as a bank teller. This was followed by a position in construction management as a project engineer/coordinator at Unlimited Construction. After two years, he moved into a project management role at Island Sun Solar, now known as Pacific Energy Partners, where he assisted with design, sales and training. James was working as assistant to the chief engineer at Howard Hughes Corporation where he oversaw building maintenance when he was called home to Saipan to help with the family business.

Family First

As the only child, he always knew he was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps by one day taking over the company. However, he also felt it was important to gain work experience on the outside first before joining the family business. “I felt I was on a successful career track in Honolulu and didn’t plan on returning to Saipan so soon,” he admits, “but my parents needed me now.”

At 27, Deleon Guerrero was recently named Vice President of JM Holdings LLC, a diverse, multi-faceted company, involved in real estate, land sales, long-term leases, agriculture and farming, building and ground maintenance, house rentals, travel, and more. J.M. are the first and middle initials of his father, Jesus Manuel.

Working closely with his father, who oversees operations, and his mother, accounting, he is dedicated to learning everything about the 30-year-old business as well as upholding its values and ethics. Overseeing 15 employees, he enjoys the flexibility and the variety of tasks that the role offers, including new business meetings and drafting bid proposals.

Forging his own path

For Deleon Guerrero, it’s been an adjustment joining the business at this time, and while there is pride, he also is aware of the big responsibility in carrying on the business’ legacy and sustainability. He’s confident he “brings skills I’ve developed through my Chaminade education and previous work experience to the company.” Valuable skills such as public speaking and interviewing from professors and sales and reviewing blueprints and drawings from previous employers are all assets. Deleon Guerrero also is studying to a become a certified real estate appraiser and will become the first local on Saipan.

With deep respect for his father, Deleon Guerrero says he knows he has big shoes to fill. His father taught him business sense and gave him a firm foundation, and he’s looking forward to carrying on his father’s vision for business expansion both locally and in Hawai’i. As a young professional, one of the immediate additions James is making to enhance work processes is through the use of social media and a digital platform for clients to easily reach the company. Deleon Guerrero has also joined the Saipan Chamber of Commerce to network with other business leaders.

His dad, who founded the Marianas Visitors Authority, is casually nicknamed the “father of tourism” because of the partnerships that he created with airlines and new events that were launched such as Taste of the Marianas, which was inspired by Taste of Honolulu. Deleon Guerrero understands the importance of caring for the community and hopes to become a next generation leader by giving back to his local community.

His advice for Chaminade students, recent graduates and young professionals is to pursue your dreams and goals; if it doesn’t work out right away, don’t give up. “Do what you have to do until you’re happy with the end result,” James says.

The sky is truly the limit for this Chaminade alumnus.