Life can take us on many paths and places over the span of 50 years. Like many in our KHS class, Gail Kiyama attended the University of Hawai‘i in its elementary education program. Just before her last semester of student teaching, she moved to Kent, Washington as a University of Washington exchange student. After 23 years growing up in metro Honolulu, she found herself in a place with corn fields, cows, and trains running through town. Kent’s cold and wet weather gave Gail her biggest shock! She says it was so cold and wet that she had to wear “thick, waterproof Frankenstein shoes!”
After receiving her degree in education with a minor in psychology, Gail moved to Portland, Oregon. Gail had every intention of teaching, but she was hired by the Department of Energy, Bonneville Power Administration in a management training program in the personnel department. Gail loved human resources because it allowed her to use her minor in psychology, and she found it easy to relate to all levels of employees, from executives to the workers on the shop floor.
For the next 40 years, Gail worked in various public agencies that provided important services to its communities. The majority of her career was spent in agencies that protected the environment. Gail spent a number of years working in industrial plants, learning their operations and maintenance, which resulted in her managing a five-year matching program between the General Organization of Sanitary Drainage (GOSD) and the Bonneville Power Administration. Under a partnership with USAID, Gail traveled twice to Egypt to learn about their operations and management practices to ultimately assist them in reducing pollution of the Nile River.
The last 15 years of her career, she served as the HR manager for the Wastewater Treatment Division, then HR manager for the Department of Natural Resources and Parks. She was responsible for a staff of 30, managed strategic planning, labor negotiations, grievances, arbitrations, investigations, mediations, training and employment.
Now retired, Gail can take pride that her desire to educate young children in Hawai‘i led to a career of helping countless people from rural Washington and Cairo, Egypt to take better care for our planet.
