Click here to sign up to attend ---> Doodle Loretta Yajima is Chair of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of the Hawaii Children's Discovery Center, positions she has held as a full-time volunteer for the past 30 years. In that capacity, she not only formulates the Center’s overall strategic and business plans, but oversees all of the day-to-day operation of the facility with her daughter Liane—literally from soup to nuts. During the museum’s first capital campaign in 1987, she assembled and spearheaded a volunteer campaign committee, which raised nearly $2 million to build a children’s museum in the Dole Cannery Square. But Loretta saw more for the children of Hawaii than those temporary facilities could provide. Through her tireless efforts, a second and decidedly more ambitious $15 million capital campaign was achieved to build a permanent “world-class” children's museum in Hawaii. Out of the ashes of a former city incinerator, The Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center opened its doors in 1998. Located next to the Kaka’ako Waterfront Park, the center today serves over 120,000 visitors per year. It is considered by many to be among the finest children’s museums in the country. The Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center, a mid-sized facility with a modest budget by national standards, provided the model for the Chinese to create their own facilities for young children. In 2011, Mr. Niu Gensheng, an influential Chinese businessman and philanthropist, visited the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center in Honolulu, on his way home to Inner Mongolia. His visit opened his eyes to what a children’s museum could be and do. Impressed with the Discovery Center, he sought to open a children’s museum in his home city of Hohhot and bring a western-based concept of early learning to China. Moreover, if Hawaii’s Discovery Center was their model, Loretta became Mr. Gensheng’s inspiration and, at his personal behest, she has traveled to China regularly over the past 5 years to advise the Chinese in the design and construction of the two children’s museums now being built in Beijing and Hohhot. Yet with all of her accomplishments, Loretta considers her greatest achievement to be her three adult daughters, Lara, Liane and Tiffany, and five grandchildren—all of them very much her inspiration for the development of the museum. Our speaker, Ms. Loretta Yajima, is a remarkable woman with an impressive abundance of energy, determination and vision. |
