The Hogan Entrepreneurial Leadership Program is now celebrating its 24th year mentoring students seeking independent business opportunities or leadership skills to help organizations succeed, both for-profit and nonprofit. On Wednesday evening, past and current Hogan participants, alumni, and business leaders gathered to launch another year of Hogan with an inspiring keynote address and opportunities to connect, network, share inspiring stories, and celebrate one of Chaminade’s most successful institutions.
Chaminade University President Lynn Babington, Ph.D., welcomed attendees to the celebration and thanked them for supporting the Hogan initiative over the years.
“It’s such a pleasure to be here with you this evening and again kick off the 24th year of the Hogan program,” Babington said.
“We are very proud of the Hogan program,” she said. “Linking students with community members enriches new ideas and opportunities here in Hawai‘i.”
This year’s Hogan Kick-Off Celebration, held at the Sullivan Family Library Lawn, featured music, good food, drinks, and time for attendees to mingle and socialize. The featured speaker for the evening was Melissa Crounse Kaufman, a renowned entrepreneur and Founding Executive Director of The Garage, a startup incubator at Northwestern University.
“Previous speakers have been terrific, but I think this is one of the best ones we’ve had that I can remember in my time,” said Roy Panzarella, Ph.D., Director of the Hogan Entrepreneurial Leadership Program.
Kaufman, who now lives in Maui and works as a school teacher, shared a story with the audience of how she once tested the entrepreneurial instincts of her students against artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
She split the class into two groups and asked each to develop an innovative idea for a new snack product. One group had unlimited access to AI tools; the other had to use their wits.
Upon conclusion of this exercise, the class determined that the best idea came from the “brain team” that was denied the use of any AI advantage. The winning team proposed selling hibiscus-flavored popcorn that comes in resealable bags.
Kaufman told the audience to take this lesson to heart.
“AI is a pattern matching machine,” she said. “It draws from what already exists, and it optimizes for what has worked before, in the past.
“The winning idea in my class didn’t come from a prompt. It came from a teenage girl’s lived experience.”
Kaufman said she owes her success not to building successful companies, but to building up people and helping them make personal connections they can translate into winning enterprises.
“Students cannot build judgment or persuasive speaking or interpret body language or build connections alone in their dorm rooms talking to Claude,” she stressed. “Students need to interact with real businesses and real business problems in real time.”
Panzarella said Kaufman’s message is poignant for the times as the rise of AI technology leaves everyone nervous for the future.
Kaufman pleaded with business leaders in the audience to deepen their engagement with Hogan students. The program’s long success lies not with technologies like AI, she said, but with the personal connections the program fosters.
“You have to help in this mission because we can’t do it alone,” she said. “You need to share your time, your expertise, and your network with the students by serving as a mentor or a guest speaker.”
In addition to raffle prizes, the event presented two awards recognizing present and future entrepreneurial success.
Kai Cowell was honored with the Hogan program’s “In the Arena” award for her success with Ka‘iulani Spices, a healthy foods and flavoring company selling products at major retail outlets. The $1,500 student award went to Liliyah-Joy Quel-Kaina, a Hogan junior juggling two majors and minors who recently landed a coveted internship opportunity.
The latest Hogan kick-off celebration comes at the midpoint of the semester and also lands in the middle of Chaminade’s first Wellness Week, a series of events aimed at helping students pause and reset.
Panzarella said the timing for the 24th Hogan Kick-Off is deliberate. He finds participants are more engaged and primed for action at this point in the academic year compared to the beginning of the semester or in the summer.
“We wanted to take time to let the semester sort of breathe a little bit,” he said. “We found that people are much more amenable to celebrating, to community building.”
He said the 24th year of the Hogan program won’t be delivering any major new surprises, but the year will still feature plenty of exciting gatherings and inspiring speakers. He said the team is planning new leadership initiatives, including one that may happen at Pearl Harbor.
Much of this year will be spent planning for the Hogan Entrepreneurial Leadership Program’s 25th anniversary year, coming up in 2027. Panzarella promised great things to come as the Hogan program rings in 25 years of incubating new business ideas and preparing young entrepreneurs for success.
“25 is going to be big,” he said.