RISE

Susan Yamada, chair of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship(PACE) Board of Directors and Shidler College of Business alumna, has been named the 2025 Women Who Mean Business Career Achievement honoree by Pacific Business News (PBN).

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni Walter Dods, Jr. and Jay H. Shidler have gifted a sculpture by the late Bumpei Akaji to their alma mater. The sculpture, “RISE,” was installed outside the Walter Dods, Jr. RISE Center, and dedicated in a special ceremony prior to the official grand opening of the center on June 15.

Honolulu philanthropist and former First Hawaiian Bank Chairman Walter A. Dods Jr. is donating $5 million to the University of Hawaiʻi’s new Residences for Innovative Student Entrepreneurs (RISE) at UH Mānoa. In recognition of this momentous gift, the building will be renamed the Walter Dods Jr. RISE Center.

More than 325 University of Hawaiʻi students have become the first residents to move into the new state-of-the-art Residences for Innovative Student Entrepreneurs (RISE) student housing facility for the fall 2023 semester. The state-of-the-art building opened in August 2023 on the site of the former Atherton YMCA and is expected to transform the entrepreneurial ecosystem at UH’s flagship campus.

The Clarence T.C. Ching Foundation has given $200,000 to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s RISE—Residences for Innovative Student Entrepreneurs—project, a world-class innovation and entrepreneurship center coupled with student housing being built on the site of the former Atherton YMCA across from the flagship campus.

Two major efforts begin today tied to the University of Hawaiʻi Residences for Innovative Student Entrepreneurs (RISE) project. Applications open for leasing at RISE, which is slated to open in fall 2023, and scholarships for 50 UH students interested in innovation and entrepreneurship through the Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship (PACE) PACE Leaders program.

Ben Godsey knows how important entrepreneurs are to Hawaiʻi’s economy. As the president and CEOof ProService Hawaii, one of Hawaiʻi’s largest outsourced human resource providers, he counts more than 2,000 local small businesses as clients—most of them entrepreneurs.