Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 37, Number 1, 1 January 2020 — Aloha mai kākou, [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Aloha mai kākou,

I am pleased to present this year's Annual Report of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), covering the activities of the agency from July 1, 2018 throughJune 50,2019. Now that 40 years have passed since Hawai'i voters first approved establishing OHA to work to improve the lives of Native Hawaiians, eaeh of these annual reports seem like its own chapter in the growing mo'olelo of the agency. But this annual report is different. In many ways, this annual report marks a major transition period for OHA, the end to a distinctive chapter in the agency's story. In 2005, the State Auditor found that OHA was op-

erating as a "fledgling agency" despite its 25 years of existence. At the time, the auditor criticized OHA for not focusing on long-term planning. We took this criticism to heart. We understood that an agency with the breadth of our mandate cannot remain stagnant and cannot resist calls for change. So in the late 2000s, OHA embarked on an ambitious strategic planning process to enhanee the alignment of our efforts across all sectors of the agency with well-defined, researched and vetted priorities and to use robust data collection to evaluate success. The result, the OHA Strategic Plan 2010-2018, was crucial to helping us better direct our resources to more effectively meet the most critical needs of our community. This meant that our research informed our advocacy, spending and land management. Our vision was that the Strategic Plan would transform the agency into an ihe (spear). We became one streamlined instrument with the handle directing the tip, working in unison, pointing at the same target. Critical to the success of the OHA Strategic Plan 2010-2018 was Dr. Kamana'opono Crabbe, who was promoted from OHA Research Director to OHA Chief Executive Officer/Ka Pouhana in 2012. With his strong relationships with our community and his natural ability to inspire staff, he was able to leverage agency and beneficiary resources to effectuate significant changes in our strategic priority areas of aina, culture, eeonomie self-sufficiency, education, governance, and health. Perhaps the most important legacy of Dr. Crabbe is his instillation of cultural values into the daily operations of the agency, including establishing Hawaiian nomenclature for the organizational structure of the agency and for individual position titles. This annual report closes out the tenure of Dr. Crabbe and serves as a transition between our OHA Strategic Plan 2010-2018 and our upcoming OHA Strategic Plan 2020-2055. I want to extend a warm mahalo to Dr. Crabbe for his significant contributions to an important chapter in OHA's history. I am proud of our achievements contained in this annual report, and I look forward to reporting in the future on OHA's new direction with our upcoming strategic plan, our new CEO and the next chapter in OHA's mo'olelo. Me ke aloha,

Colette Y. Machado CHAIR | TRUSTEE, MOLOKA'I & LĀNA'I