Last May, we launched our first Paubox Customer Success Road Show, returning to the homeland of Hawaii to meet with customers and make new friends. While there, we visited Make-a-Wish Hawaii and spoke with Siana Austin Hunt, the President and CEO of Make-a-Wish Hawaii. Make-a-Wish Hawaii played a pivotal role in Paubox's creation. Here is the transcript of how Siana tells the story of Paubox's genesis. You can watch the full interview here.
Siana Austin Hunt: Make-a-Wish Hawaii’s role in the genesis of Paubox
Hoala Greevy: So, you and I have known each other a long time. And as Paubox gets more and more customers, and as we describe ourselves to our customers, the genesis of Paubox begins with Make-a-Wish Hawaii, and you and me having an auspicious lunch some years ago. Would you care to recap that or do you want me to cover it?
Siana Austin Hunt: No, I just remember being sort of in this building stage as we looked at what the growing pipeline of wishes look like, and how do we best communicate with 62 chapters across the country, and vendors that support our incoming families, and hospitals and medical communities that are referring kids and are supporting them throughout their journey as their wish, and knowing that we just have a lot of sensitive communication and pieces that we needed to be able to not only feel confident in our communication back and forth to all of these different constituents groups, but also that it matched our brand and it meant there was a trusted environment that sat in that. That they could say, “You know what, that’s Make-a-Wish, I’m going to open that email.” Or, “That’s a relationship I want to open and follow through with.” And I know that it would happen with incredible security and confidence. So that was, you know - “How can we do this?” and can we just white paper something? That's been something I've loved about working with you. We sit down and we can say, “All right I've got this problem,” and then we bust it out, let’s see what we can figure out. And I think it went through multiple iterations. You took something that was a problem and turned it into an opportunity. And then for us to then take that and kind of guinea pig it in lots of different formats, both with our medical community and our volunteer base, and really to say, “I want to tell you about this child, and I want talk to you about what they need,” but I also want to make sure that we’re protecting them and everything that we’re doing. We’re protecting our brand security as well.
Hoala Greevy: Brand security - you hit it.
Siana Austin Hunt: It’s been huge, it’s been huge for us. And even just the storage component of that, to be able to make sure that I know that whatever we have with an organization that has a brand like Make-a-Wish, sometimes we’re a target. And we couldn’t be open-ended to that. We needed to get out there and advance of it and say we’re going to protect ourselves, we’re going to protect our wish families and our constituents in that shared communication. Hoala Greevy: We will never forget.
Siana Austin Hunt: Oh Lord have mercy! But it’s been so fun. You know trial and error in the beginning that has produced what is today, so Im’ so impressed with what you’ve been able to achieve and do, it’s been really great.
Hoala Greevy: We feel like we’re just getting started, but we’ll never forget where we come from.
Siana Austin Hunt: Okay well thank you. Out of humble roots, and maybe an auspicious lunch in Chinatown. But you know, lots of white paper work that actually turned into genius, genius work.
About Make-a-Wish Hawaii
Every year, Make-a-Wish Hawaii grants wishes to thousands of keiki – or children – fighting a critical illness. Their wish granting not only provide a lifelong memory for the child and their family, but it also empowers the children to fight harder against their illnesses, helping many overcome their battles and go on to lead healthy, long lives. Based in Honolulu in the Hawaiian island of Oahu, Make-a-Wish Hawaii brings the aloha spirit to families who need it.
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