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"I chair the Senate’s Economic Development and Technology Committee and have worked in the policy arena to diversify Hawaii’s economy over the past two decades. After years of effort, Hawaii can finally take advantage of the global Internet economy with its achievement of critical mass in knowledge-based industries."

My goal is to help build the kind of economy in which people who love Hawaii can come home. Almost every day, someone tells me about a family member or close friend who had to leave Hawaii to find challenging work with good wages. There are retirees who have relocated because the cost of living is cheaper in Las Vegas or in the Midwest. People don’t particularly want to leave, they just feel that they must in order to survive.”


A 20-year veteran of the Hawaii State Legislature, Senator Fukunaga serves on several National Conference of Legislature committees that deal with state and federal issues regarding e-commerce, telecommunications, high technology and information privacy. She has served on the State Legislature’s Hawaii Broadband Task Force and Hawaii Identity Theft Task Force, is a member of the Policy Committee of the Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization, Co-Convenor for the Hawaii Transit-Oriented Community-based Economic Development Project, and is on the Board of Directors for the Historic Hawaii Foundation and Sexual Assault Treatment Center.

Senator Fukunaga has spearheaded many of Hawaii’s digital media, tech industry financing, workforce development and broadband initiatives over the last decade.  In 1995, she was one of three public sector members of President Clinton’s National Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee (NIIAC), which launched the campaign to link the nation’s schools, libraries and rural communities to the Internet. Her efforts in the technology arena resulted in the first online access to legislative information, the nation’s only Public Access Room and Internet access for schools, libraries and health care institutions.

Senator Fukunaga has served in the State Senate since 1992. A graduate of the first graduating class of University of Hawaii's William Richardson School of Law, she is a proud alumni of Hawaii's public schools.