Andreas Beck.
HPU alum Andreas Beck can recognize Hawaiʻi in an instant. Not by the skyline or the surf report, but by the air.
“The smell of Hawaiʻi and the ocean is magical,” Beck shared. “You can wake me up in the middle of the night and I would know it is Hawaiʻi right away. Something in the air. You know right away when you land that you are in a magical place.”
For Beck, an international business leader who’s spent about a decade in Dubai on and off, and who now serves as a managing partner and banking community leader at Kyndryl, that sensory memory isn’t just nostalgia. It’s a timestamp. Hawaiʻi was the moment the world got bigger, louder, and more possible.
Beck grew up in Cologne, Germany, a city he describes as “warmhearted, open, and unapologetically social, historic in its bones and festive in its bloodstream.” Cologne’s carnival season is famous for taking over the city, and locals are known for being outgoing. Beck has an easy explanation for why: in Cologne, even the dialect comes with a drink pairing.
“We have a slang dialect in Cologne, and we are a very social culture,” he said. “It’s comically known as the only dialect you can drink! Kölsch dialect. And this is the beer that we drink as well. It’s only served in small glasses in the pubs, and if you go to a traditional Cologne pub, waiters go around and refill the beer. The only way to pass on the refill is to put your coaster on the top of the glass.”
It’s funny in the way Beck shares this local custom, but it’s also Beck in a nutshell: friendly momentum, lots of conversation, and an appreciation for the unwritten rules that make a place feel real.
That people-first wiring started early. Beck’s mother worked in consumer goods, and he began helping his family supply supermarkets with essentials—food, beverages, candy, tourist items—while meeting store owners and workers from many different backgrounds. The stores, he recalls, were run by a wide mix of people, and the work became a front-row seat to the world. Cologne, he said, is a liberal, open community, and growing up there made international diversity feel natural rather than novel.
“People want to go places,” Beck said. “Because Cologne is so diverse and open, we are used to being with people around the world. It is natural to feel comfortable with that diversity and for us to seek other cultures around the world that are as diverse and open as Cologne.”
That instinct collided with a very real problem in 2008. As a student at Fontys University of Applied Sciences Venlo in the Netherlands, Beck needed to complete a mandatory internship abroad. His original plan, a semester on a ship, fell apart when the financial crisis hit. Another option was Australia, but it didn’t spark his interests. He was stuck, the clock was ticking, and he wanted something real that was more than a backup plan.
Then a name popped up that he hadn’t expected: Hawaiʻi Pacific University.
“I was really stuck, and then someone told me about Hawaiʻi Pacific University,” Beck recalled. “I said, ‘Wow, I have never heard of HPU.’ So, I looked into Hawaiʻi. Incredible! This was before smartphones and I did it all through some simple investigation. I knew HPU was a calling for me.”
Beck arrived in Honolulu in August 2008, right as the financial crisis was reshaping the world. Waikiki was surreal in that moment: hotel rooms for $35 a night, and the euro stretched far against the dollar. Beck had minimal expectations, minimal research, and (he admits now) minimal preparation.
In hindsight, he says that was the best possible way to do it. “You have no expectations, and you are able to see everything new for the first time,” he shared.
Beck moved into an apartment on Seaside Avenue in Waikiki, sharing the place with another HPU student, and took business courses downtown on Fort Street Mall, an energetic, international cross-section of people that felt familiar in an unexpected way. It reminded him of Cologne: diverse, open, full of motion.
But Hawaiʻi also gave Beck a lesson he still tells with a laugh, because it’s the kind of detail you only learn by living it. After arriving in Honolulu, he went to Walmart to buy a phone. Thinking ahead to an internship in New York after his coursework at HPU completed, he chose a 212-area code. Logical, right?
Wrong island, dude.
“Without an 808-area code, everyone thought I was a scammer!” Beck laughed. “No one would take my call seriously. In Hawaiʻi, you need an 808. I took from this experience how important it is for people in Hawaiʻi to trust each other, and how important an 808 number is. You gotta have that 808.”
It’s a small story, but it captures something Beck found throughout his time at HPU: culture isn’t just what you see, but it’s the invisible rules that shape how people connect, trust, and build community.
In the classroom, Beck gravitated toward business and marketing, and he credits HPU faculty with bringing real-world perspective into every lesson. One professor helped Beck understand how brands communicate value and why people buy what they buy.
“He made a big impact on me at HPU,” Beck said, recalling lessons on marketing strategy and the “unique selling proposition,” including a classic Apple commercial as an example of how desire can be created before the audience even fully understands what’s being sold. For Beck, it wasn’t just an entertaining lecture. It was a framework he carried forward.
Outside class, Beck experienced Hawaiʻi the way exchange students remember forever: Waikiki, Ala Moana Beach Park, Fort DeRussy, and long days that blurred into salt air and sunlight. A trip to Diamond Head remains a permanent mental postcard.
“Wow, that was so impressive, to see that view from Diamond Head,” he said. “I never forgot that. I also got to visit all the neighbor islands. We camped, stayed with friends, really saw the islands as they were, from a simple perspective.”
After HPU, Beck headed to New York for that internship with Hugo Boss and discovered quickly that fashion wasn’t his future. He returned to Germany and felt the whiplash of reverse culture shock. Life looked the same, but he didn’t feel the same inside it. He worked in various bars and clubs while in college and then started looking for a career with altitude, something global, challenging, dynamic.
That path led him to IBM, first in Germany, where he spent four years in sales in Düsseldorf. But the dream of Dubai kept calling, first through friendships, then through repeated visits, and finally through the hard-earned realization that global moves often require local presence, local networks, and relentless performance.
“You have to be in Dubai to get an opportunity there,” Beck said. “Networking and performance were key. It’s like chess, to move and live in a new place.”
Beck would ultimately spend a total of about 10 years in Dubai on and off, returning repeatedly until it became a true base. At one point he returned to Germany and found Munich wasn’t the right fit, an experience he describes as a low point, largely because he missed the international energy and diversity of a global city.
Then, another shift arrived, this time at IBM. After a boss left the company, Beck was offered a role as a people manager and was suddenly overseeing hundreds of people, including in a financial services lead position. He didn’t feel quite ready at the time, but he took the challenge anyway and worked relentlessly to grow into it and excel.
In 2021, IBM’s spinoff of Kyndryl was announced, and one of Beck’s mentors encouraged him to consider a new leap: chief of staff to a group president at Kyndryl. It wasn’t an executive title. It was, however, the kind of pivot that opens doors if you’re willing to take it, especially during a period defined by uncertainty.
“There is opportunity in chaos at times,” Beck said. “You have to seize that opportunity. No one knew the new president, or even the name of the new company. It was all that new. But I knew I had to go.”
While living in Munich during COVID, Beck worked U.S. hours remotely and treated every video call like a moment to demonstrate readiness, always professional, always prepared, always camera-ready. He moved to New York in 2021 for about a year, experiencing the city during the pandemic and finding it, despite everything, full of energy.
Eventually, the path back to Dubai came the way many of Beck’s biggest moves have, through performance, persistence, and relationships. In June 2022, he returned to lead Kyndryl’s Middle East and Africa business as vice president and managing director, a role he held for just under two years. In March 2024, he stepped into his current role as managing partner and banking community leader, focused on Kyndryl’s largest global banking relationships, work that keeps him traveling frequently, because, as he puts it, you go where the customers are.
Through all the moves—Cologne, Honolulu, New York, Munich, Dubai—Beck credits Hawaiʻi and HPU, specifically, as the catalyst that changed how he saw the world.
“HPU was what made everything possible. Hawaiʻi is a melting pot of cultures, everyone in the same class, giving different perspectives every day. Hawaiʻi is my happy place. I feel incredible happiness the moment I touch land in the islands. To anyone thinking about HPU and living in Hawaiʻi, I have four words: Hawaiʻi is a go! Seize that opportunity and never look back.”
