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Ed and Lynn Hogan want to "entrepreneuralize" America. Hogans use success
to create new biz leadersBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.comThe husband and wife founded a small New Jersey travel agency that grew to a Hawaii travel conglomerate, Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays, bringing more than 450,000 mainlanders to the island this year and generating revenue of more than $370 million.
It is that enterprising attitude the Hogans want to encourage and teach, through a private trust that partners with universities.
Today, they brought this back to Hawaii, the source of their wealth, with the new Hogan Entrepreneurial Program at Chaminade University.
The Hogan Family Foundation, set up in 1998, launched its education program four years ago at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. The trust later expanded the program to Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., and now has brought it to Chaminade.
The trust funds a hands-on education program for honors-level undergraduate and grad- ate students that will bring them in direct touch with the working side of business while they wind up their education. They end up with their chosen degree plus a special "Certificate in Entrepreneurial Studies." The gift is ongoing and does not have a dollar-amount attached to it.
"Chaminade has really taken hold of it," Ed Hogan said in an interview alongside Waikiki Beach at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. "There are about 27 students already in the program." At LMU, it is a special "travel and tourism" program, but at Gonzaga and Chaminade the program is broader, funding teaching and programs that will create entrepreneurs in a wide range of businesses.
Actually, it's 28 students, said John Webster, director of the Chaminade program.
Webster said the school's program works in the best interests of the students and the community.
The Hogan foundation helps fund salaries and other expenses. Chaminade kicks in some money. The main benefit is that the program lets the better students, those with a 3.9 grade point average or above, replace some of their elective courses with two years of courses focusing on entrepreneurship. In the Chaminade version that means entrepreneurs in fields as diverse as biology, history, international relations and education, Webster said.
The hands-on part comes from a commitment by the students in the program to spend six weeks with an entrepreneur, living the life of the entrepreneur. There are different courses, two on entrepreneurship, two on skill development and how to pass that on, and there is a community service aspect, Webster said.
A key to getting the program started was that Gary Hogan, one of Ed and Lynn Hogan's sons and a key executive in their businesses in Hawaii for some years, is a member of the Chaminade board of regents. Gary is also chairman of an advisory board for the entrepreneur program.
Ed Hogan said he and his family want to create "productive" people, because those who really produce through their own efforts tend to help others less fortunate, spreading the wealth and creating jobs. "We're not trying to make rich people out of these children. We just want to make productive people," he said.
Hogan and his style were productive enough to attract the attention of a much bigger travel business, the Automobile Club of Southern California, which bought his business three years ago -- Pleasant Travel Service Inc. and its subsidiaries, Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays, Pleasant Mexico Holidays and others that provide travel to many destinations.
Hogan said the automobile club, the largest automobile club affiliated with AAA (formerly the American Automobile Association), believes in the entrepreneurship of the Hogan family enough to keep him on as chairman, Lynn as secretary and vice chairman, son Brian as vice president of Pleasant Travel Service, son Glenn as president of the four-hotel operation in Hawaii called Hawaiian Hotels and Resorts, daughter Chris as executive vice president of Pleasant Travel Service and son Gary as president of Pleasant Island Holidays.
The Hogan Family Foundation takes its education about travel and tourism out into the public on the mainland with its Travel & Tourism Institute, which takes a 45-foot bus across the country as a mobile classroom to teach people about the industry.
The foundation is also known for saving what was the Kodak Hula Show in Waikiki, now the Pleasant Hawaiian Hula Show. It has some significant charitable activities too, such as the Hogan Angel Flight Program that provides transportation for people who cannot afford to needed treatment or tests, and the HEART Program (for Heart Education and Rehabilitation Training) that helps finance home-based rehabilitation for heart programs.
There is no Hogan Museum yet, but Ed Hogan has some ideas about that too. He has two old automobiles at the family home at Westlake Island, Calif., outside Westlake Village, the company's business headquarters. One is a 1931 Cadillac Phaeton and the other a 1933 Rolls-Royce Phantom.
Both, Hogan said, represent entrepreneurship at the height of economic depression. They could be the basis for a museum about the best of American entrepreneurship.