Paubox Kahikina Scholarship Zoom social mixer - February 2024

Last week we held a Zoom social mixer for the Paubox Kahikina Scholarship. 

What's happening: 14 scholarship recipients, advisors, and a prospective recipient joined me on a Zoom for 90 minutes. After introductions, I presented slides on demographics of our scholarship recipients. After that, we held an open-ended Q&A session. 

Who attended?:

• Rich Mansfield (Paubox)
• Kaipo Crowell (Advisor, Kakou Professional Development)
• Dean Levitt (Paubox)
• Kawehi Cabuzel (Recipient, USC)
• Taylor Ho (Advisor, Twitch)
• Charissa Wong (Advisor, Bowers + Kubota)
• Douglas Finnegan (Advisor, Google)
• Rayfe Gaspar-Asaoka (Advisor, Canaan Partners)
• Taysia Morioka (Recipient, University of Michigan)
• Beau Monday (Advisor, Punahou School)
• Logan Lau (Recipient, Stanford University)
• Noah Kanahele (Student, Kamehameha Schools Kapālama)
• Koa Chang (Recipient, Stanford University)
• Michael Bennett (Advisor, OceanBit )
• Myself (Paubox)

Paubox has a scholarship?: Yes we do. The primary objective of the Paubox Kahikina Scholarship is to encourage Native Hawaiians to pursue careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) or Tech in general.

The scholarship is recurring in nature. In other words, recipients receive $1,000 per year until they graduate.

The deadline to apply for this year is May 31st. 

Apply now 

My takeaways:

• A recurring theme during the social mixer was networking. Doesn't matter how good your grades or test scores are, networking is what gets you ahead.
• Koa Chang asked where he could find affordable rent in the Bay Area during the summer. There was a collective chuckle amongst the Bay Area contingent :)
• Taylor Ho reflected how special a place Hawaii is and how strong a pull it remains for those ex-pats on the mainland, seeking to return home someday.
• Logan Lau asked when the right time to return home to Hawaii is. I'm not sure the group had a uniform answer for him.
• Taysia Morioka expressed ideations around her college journey and the question of what city to pursue a career in after attaining an undergraduate degree.
• Kawehi Cabuzel wanted to learn more about Michael Bennett's startup, OceanBit.

The big picture: When it comes to our scholarship, we know recipients always want financial aid and access to our professional network. These are big ideas that will not change over time.

The Zoom social mixer is our endeavor to connect recipients with our network.

See also: Paubox Kahikina Scholarship now includes all Tech fields

Where did the idea for the Zoom social mixer come from?: Recent Purdue graduate and Paubox Kahikina Scholarship recipient, Alyssa Lyman, brought the idea up over lunch with me in January.

Lunch with Alyssa Lyman at The Pacific Club