I love getting glimpses into other people’s lives and telling their stories. I also find it a satisfying challenge to write so readers understand what’s so interesting about someone – so they see what I see. I’d like to do a lot more profiles and other articles that tell people’s stories in this coming year.
PROFILES: TELLING PEOPLE'S STORIES
I’ve written about many very different people throughout my career. Here’s a sampling:
Rekindled memories of long ago on Majuro. The night I heard beloved Honolulu newspaperman Bob Krauss died, I stayed up late and wrote about a time he invited me to join him on an expedition in the Marshall Islands. I sent the article to his newspaper, the Honolulu Advertiser, and they ran it right away.
Forged by hand. Gregg Salter creates beautiful, one-of-a-kind kitchen knives, hand-forging them from steel bars and crafting premium-grade koa handles. He told me what sparked his interest in knives: when his English grandfather enlisted in WWI at age 14, he took along a knife he’d had made with a buttonhook accessory and one for cleaning horseshoes, which had his name etched on its side. It got passed down to his son, who carried it during WWII, and then to his grandson Gregg. This article ran in Halekulani Lifestyle Magazine.
Leading Women: Navigator Kaiulani Murphy charts life and sea using ancient wisdom. This woman grew up working in her family’s taro patch and became a navigator on traditional Polynesian voyaging canoes, where she sails by her knowledge of astronomy and other methods her Hawaiian ancestors used to navigate. She talked about how spending weeks on the ocean gives you a different sense of time and what’s important. I wrote this for Bank of Hawaii’s blog.
Kamakoa Dela Cruz: A ‘brave warrior’. It was heartwarming to meet this charming 9-year-old, who had some medical and developmental issues, and see how much a support worker was helping him with skills that were making his life and future brighter. This article was for the non-profit agency Full Life, which provides support for people with disabilities.
A catalyst for progress. This article features three social entrepreneurs using 5G wireless technology and mobile-first solutions for good. I was so impressed with Trisha Prabhu, now a college student, who started working on preventing cyberbullying for her middle school science project and is now CEO of a tech company with an app that’s been proven to help. This article was for Politico.com.
Midlife Dialogues. Midlife Dialogues is a YouTube channel I recently started where I interview interesting people in midlife (which I roughly define as 50+) and tell their stories. Producing videos is a new venture for me and I’m absolutely loving it. New posts every Tuesday.
Do you need help telling people’s stories? I’d be happy to talk and see if we might work well together.
Here’s Day 1 of the seven days of "What’s in Store for ’24," in case you missed it: Day 1 – B2B Technology Content Writing