Aloha, I’m Clint, an Information Technology Support Specialist with Hawai‘i Pacific Parks Association. I joined HPPA in 2026 after coming across the position the same day it was posted. I tend to be selective about employment, and this role checked a number of important boxes, so I applied right away.
My work involves integrating with a small team to support national park visitor center stores and staff across Hawaiʻi Island, Maui, and American Samoa, handling everything from point-of-sale systems and network connectivity to device deployments and day-to-day technical issues. My goal has always been to do work that holds up end-to-end and does not come at the expense of integrity, wellness, or forfeiture of a life well lived. HPPA stood out immediately in this regard. An IT role that directly supports parks, along with a team of dedicated people who clearly care about what they do, made it something worth being part of.
Open spaces serve a real purpose. They offer room to think, to decompress, and to step away from the constant pressure of daily life. Parks also carry natural and cultural history, but just as important, they remain some of the few places that are broadly accessible to the public. That access matters.
Hawai‘i Pacific Parks Association plays a direct role in supporting that access. Through its visitor center national park stores, HPPA generates funding that supports education, conservation, and ongoing projects within national parks in Hawaiʻi and American Samoa. Every purchase made in those visitor center stores contributes back to the parks themselves. That business model was a major factor in my decision to join the organization, along with the ability to do work that supports something tangible and worth maintaining.
My early years in Chicago and Virginia Beach were spent in a difficult home environment where being outside created distance from that reality. As a teenager in North Georgia, that connection developed into something more structured and lasting. Time in the mountains around Ellijay with my grandpa, camping and jumping off waterfalls at Bear Creek with friends, fishing, and exploring backroads all helped build a steady connection to the outdoors.
That connection has continued into adulthood. Time on trails in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, along sections of the Pinhoti Trail in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, and in Gifford Pinchot National Forest in southwest Washington state is not just recreational. Open spaces provide a way to reset, reflect, and work through things that do not resolve on their own. That function is not unique to me. Many people rely on these environments for the same reasons, whether they set out to or not.
That perspective carries into my work with Hawaiʻi Pacific Parks Association. Supporting park stores and staff across Hawai‘i Island, Maui, and American Samoa involves maintaining the systems that keep daily operations running. Point-of-sale systems, network connectivity, device deployments, and internal tools all play a part in making sure visitors can access resources, information, and services without friction. When those systems work, HPPA staff can stay focused on park visitors and their overall park experience.
With a background in IT, development, and digital systems, my work has always centered on improving how things function. Within HPPA, that work supports something beyond efficiency. It helps sustain the infrastructure behind the visitor experience, which in turn supports the broader mission of the National Park Service.
It is important that parks and open spaces remain available. For many people, time in these spaces is more than a visit. It is a way to reset, spend time with others, learn, or simply get outside of their own heads for a while.
Being able to contribute to that, and to support an organization that reinvests directly into parks, is what makes this work worth doing.
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