It was always the vision that Līpoa would help nurture not only Maui’s expanding technology and innovation industries, but also the next generation of homegrown innovators to someday work here. But a generation ago when it was all being planned, no one could have imagined how successful it would become — and how summer internships within Līpoa would become pathways to cutting-edge careers in space and research, without Hawai‘i’s keiki ever leaving home.
Twenty-two-year-old Jaxson Pahukala is one of them. A Kamehameha Schools Maui and Purdue University graduate, Jaxson spent two of the last three summers in college interning with research organizations within Līpoa. “When I went to college, I was fully expecting that I would live on the mainland for 5 or 10 years,” Jaxson explains. But those internships changed everything. On the last day of his internship with the Research Corporation of the University of Hawai‘i — and in the middle of his final presentation — Fortune 500 company KBR called to offer him a job at their Līpoa office. Now a software engineer working on telescope systems, Jaxson has a message for Hawai‘i’s students: “There are tons of companies that are possible avenues that I had no idea about until I had my first internship.”
Meanwhile, across the street from the KBR offices, you’ll find Liliana Royer, a 26-year-old University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa graduate who turned her summer internship into a career without ever having to leave the pae ‘āina. While in college, she landed an internship with the Research
Corporation of the University of Hawai‘i, where she dove into machine learning — a completely unfamiliar field for her at the time. “Doing the internships gave me hands-on, real-life experience, and it was niche enough to actually be a specialization,” she explained. Then near the end of the internship, an Application Engineer position opened up at the Maui High Performance Computing Center. “All of the stars aligned,” she said. She landed the full-time role.
But Maui’s students don’t even have to be physically within the park to access its opportunities. Cami Nakagawa, a Kamehameha Schools Maui graduate and current junior at Amherst College, works remotely for Cloudstone Innovations, an aerospace engineering technology firm. She grew up in Kihei passing the tech park almost daily. And like Jaxson and Liliana, Cami entered Līpoa’s community through an internship, securing a position with Cloudstone that allows her to work remotely while pursuing her double major in computer science and environmental studies. When she’s not conducting cybersecurity research for Cloudstone, she has another part-time role studying climate change and Alaska’s ecosystems. “Ideally,” Cami says about her future, “I’d use my experience in computer science for ‘āina sustainability.”