CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Donna Ching joined architecture firm Leo A Daly after14 years on the mainland and a master's degree from Yale. Ching will oversee market analysis and brand management.

Marketing manager
adds to architect’s work

Donna L. Ching » Leo A Daly , a major national architecture and engineering firm based in Omaha, Neb., has hired Donna L. Ching as development director. She will be responsible for market analysis and brand management in the Pacific. » Born and raised in Hawaii, Ching left the islands in 1980 for Williams College in Massachusetts. She returned in 1994 after working as marketing director for New Haven, Conn., managing marketing for a $450 million commercial real estate project in Boston and getting a master's degree from the Yale University School of Management. » She has worked as a management consultant with a wide range of private, public and nonprofit clients, including the Carnegie Corporation of New York's Starting Points initiative for Hawaii. The project integrated health, family support and child-care services for families in Ewa and Koolauloa on Oahu and Hilo and Puna on the Big Island. She also has served as a member of the Manoa Neighborhood Board, the Hawaii Family Support Center - Healthy Start and Friends of the Natatorium. » Age: 42.

Question: What projects are you working on for the firm?

Answer: I'm not trained as an architect or engineer. Because I have an MBA training and marketing background, I add value for clients such as the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. They are working with us on a planning study. Because of my background it gives them a strategic and analysis advantage to what they are working on. Is this going to give them the best return on investment? I think that the planning work that we do is where my talent is adding a strategic advantage for our client.

Q: What's your view on the state of local architecture?

A: I think that it's in terrible state, that Hawaii's architecture community has not as a whole produced buildings of greater significance. Hopefully Leo Daly can be part of changing that. In terms of when people think of Hawaii's architectural face, they think of downtown buildings. There are a lot of ugly buildings. Unfortunately it's partially because of economics, people try to cost-cut. But I firmly believe and our firm believes that good design is not mutually exclusive to working within a budget, and remarkable things can be done and without breaking the bank. Leo Daly was founded in 1915 as family-owned business. It's actually being run by Leo A. Daly III. I think the Daly family has always wanted to do architecture that is spirit uplifting and enhancing to the human experience. It's part of our mission statement. We don't do ugly buildings.

A lot of it is the politics of how consultants get selected. There are a lot of economics that drive what happen. It's not just a lot of people not having enough money to do the job correctly. It's sort of a mindset of mediocrity. There are good buildings but the examples are far and few between. At Leo Daly we think putting a green roof on something is a cop out.

Q: What brought you back home?

A: Don't you think 14 New England winters was enough?

Q: Was there a job prospect here?

A: After I got out of grad school, my intention was to go into community-service work. In nonprofits, you have to be committed to the community you're doing it for. I felt like I had spent enough time on the East Coast and if I was going to do this work, it was going to be for a community I felt strongly about, and that was my hometown.

Q: Tell us about Leo A Daly.

A: The reason why I took the job is it's just a very cool and unique firm to work for. The Honolulu office is a small enough scale where it's a real team atmosphere and we're part of a the fifth-biggest architecture and engineering firm in the country. All the advantages and resources of being a very large international firm, but with none of the liabilities, including bureaucracy, because the Honolulu office is very team-oriented and that's how all the offices are run: Decentralized control. With that many people, with that deep of a bench, we have in-house world-class talent for highly specialized projects. Locally we've done almost all of the telescopes on Mauna Kea, the Ko Olina swimming lagoons and the Ihilani hotel. The fun thing for me as a brand manager is no matter how unusual the project is, I can find the talent in house. I can answer the client's needs. We can cherry-pick people out of the company. I'm never going to have to say to the client, "we can't do that." The company did the master planning for Windward Community College's library. We also have an interior design practices that has worked for most of the big law firms in town, including Ashford & Wriston and Cades Schutte. Most of the office space in Alii Place are our offices.

Q: Did you learn of Leo A Daly through the company's work on the Natatorium?

A: I've known Leo A Daly because of the Natatorium project. Like I said the firm is big and well known internationally. Once it's on your radar it's a big elephant.

Q: What's your reaction to new Mayor Mufi Hannemann's move to kill the Natatorium repair project?

A: My reaction to that is I think the unfortunately the mayor and a lot of people, the general public, are quite misinformed. I think that Rick Bernstein of the Kaimana Beach Coalition has done a masterful job of managing his propaganda campaign. I think there are been a lot of misrepresentations about scientific studies and reports. ... Doing anything other than restoring the Natatorium is morally reprehensible. ... But even if you wanted to totally disregard that aspect of it, the financially and logistically expedient solution is to fix it. Any other alternative is way more costly, not permitted, not studied, not grounded in any substantial science. Nothing. Unless people want to go back to the drawing board. It's going to cost two-three-four times more to not fix it right now. I think the public has been really misled because the issue does not lend itself to sound-bite style journalism. That's what TV news has done, focus on the "he said, she said" stuff. People have been never shown what the newly engineered pool would look like or why it work ... because those things are complicated. I think Friends of the Natatorium have to do a better job of getting information out so people can understand it. It's almost scandalous how misleading the information out there is.