Q. You have a lot of titles, including the new position of chief operating officer. What are your responsibilities?

A. I've been overseeing the financial functions of the company as chief financial officer, and a lot of the different business services reported to that position. We reorganized when I joined so that things like HR, technology, even marketing were all shared-service units that reported directly to that position. At Maui Land & Pine, we like to promote people into jobs they're already doing, so the board and our CEO, David Cole, recognized that it was a good time to make some of that transition official. Now the business operating units report to me as well as the shared-services groups. It provides a little better coordination.

Q. Are you able to balance your various responsibilities?

A. You have to change your hats, but we're kind of a lean organization anyway. We have a very good team, and they're a great group of managers to work with, and you learn how to delegate. I served at other companies as a CEO and had various roles, so it's been a pleasure to be able to extend some of those abilities as we have very fine managers that work with me that can do their jobs well.

Q. You have a background in technology and real estate. Does that combination help you now?

A. It really does. The technology background is great because you're used to the external and internal change, and you're managing for change. I had the opportunity and the challenge of managing companies that were in transition or doing turnarounds. I also had experience, specifically when I was a business consultant in a lot of different industries and some of those industries are our business, so I had experience working for a major agriculture company. I've worked for a resort company, and I was an operating person for a real estate company. So when you look at Maui Land & Pine, we have three different types of businesses that are related. We have the agriculture business. We have our resort business at Kapalua, and we also have our real estate development business. So I knew enough to be "dangerous" in each of those businesses, and recognized some patterns and knew a little bit about those, so that was very helpful in the current job.

Q. You also have a law background?

A. I attended Columbia Law School, and I actually practiced for a couple of years in corporate security law. Then I figured out that the clients were having more fun, and I moved over to the business side. But I do have a legal background, and it does help in doing transactions, reviewing documents and managing lawyers as well.

Q. What are some of the challenges that face you and Maui Land & Pineapple?

A. The challenges right now are external. Rainy days are not good for our company. When you have inclement weather, there are a lot of things you can't control. For example, just a 1-degree drop in temperature that's unforecast can delay our fruit production by a couple of weeks. So as farmers, we're facing the challenges of the weather, and running the resort is the same thing. That's something that we can't control, so we just have to manage through it.

With the recent announcement by Aloha, that certainly won't help the resort business overall. There's a general real estate softening, and there are a lot of things going on on the Mainland that I think will impact not only us, but all of Hawai'i. So we're looking at different markets. With the dollar weakening a bit and other currencies getting stronger, we can edge out into some other markets. One of the reasons we've announced the LPGA Kapalua Classic is we think that that's an opportunity for us to attract a lot of interest from Korea. Twenty-five percent of the LPGA professionals are from Korea, so we're looking at tapping into other markets and seeing whether we can derive more business there. It's going to be tough in the next couple of years.

Q. Do you have a business philosophy?

A. I've always found that it's good to listen. Whether it's a receptionist or a Ph.D. candidate, everybody has experiences that you can learn from. As you incorporate good ideas from others and empower them, that's really the best way to manage. We also have a fantastic leader. Our CEO, David Cole, is brilliant, he's a visionary, and as he sets the direction for us, you want to teach people the principles and let them operate within those guidelines. You set the direction that you're heading and then allow your managers to make decisions so they can pursue their own goals within the framework of the overall strategy.

Q. Was switching from trading on the American Stock Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange a significant change?

A. The general principle there is to do whatever we can to help our shareholders. With the New York Stock Exchange, there's a little more liquidity, there's a little more efficiency in the market, and since we did qualify to do that, we felt that the change would be valuable to help our shareholders, and we're pleased with the market's reaction. Maui Land & Pine is a company in transition. It's been very tough. The investments that we've made in pineapple, that business is a very tough business, losing money for years and years, and I think it's a good symbol that we're here to stay. We'll be a 100-year-old company on Maui in 2009, and it's a good signal that we're going with momentum into our next 100 years.

Q. Where would you like to see yourself or the company down the road?

A. Financially, we need to have our operating companies — Kapalua Resort and the agricultural division — self-sufficient. In other words, those companies need to be making money and producing positive cash flow, both in good markets when the wind is at our back and the sun is shining, but also in down markets. We need to get more value from those businesses overall. Another way to look at that is we don't want to be just reliant on real estate sales for our sustainability. That's also a nice metaphor for businesses in Hawai'i. We don't want to be just selling pieces of land to people off island and be totally dependent on the tourist trade. We need to develop businesses that are strong in their own right. That's why I like the pineapple business, because we're growing something, and we can export that and it's renewable.

Along those lines, another goal for us is to really investigate the whole renewable energy opportunities that we have through what we call "agri-energy" because there's got to be better ways to use our land and to use our resources for sustainable energy here in Hawai'i so we're not as dependent on external sources of energy.

Q. Does that mean Maui Land & Pine will be getting into the renewable energy business?

A. If there's an opportunity, it would be something we'd pursue. We are a partner in a firm called Hawai'i BioEnergy, which was formed to do feasibility studies of things like sugar cane into ethanol and other bioenergy products. If those opportunities presented themselves and we could use our land holdings for energy projects, we would be very interested in doing so.