MAKING THE MOMENT COUNT AT HAWAII NEWS NOW

Each morning at Hawaii News Now, two highly respected HPU alumni compare notes and chart the day’s campaigns as the sun hovers above the horizon on the Honolulu harbor. Donnie Esposito (B.A., Criminal Justice) and Sara Poland (née Potter) (B.S.B.A., Marketing) arrived at the network by different routes, one through radio and late-night classes, the other through cheer practice and early marketing gigs, but they meet now, at the intersection of marketing and sales.

Esposito grew up in Makiki Heights and graduated from Roosevelt High. Public service and big ideas lived at the dinner table. Her father, O. Vincent Esposito, served as Speaker of the House in the 29th Territorial Legislature in 1957, before statehood. Her great grandmother, Millie, story arcs even further, arriving from Korea with her daughter, Donie, on one of the earliest boats to Kona in 1903. Esposito’s mother, Joyce, later moved to Oʻahu and started a family. Those threads of duty, grit, and beginnings helped shape how Esposito sees time: fleeting, and worth using well.

“My profession as a young woman was dance, actually,” Esposito said. “There was so much pressure to go to college, and I was a little intimidated by it, so I decided to be a professional dancer in the early-1970s. I worked for four years as a hula dancer in Waikiki. You had to know every kind of dance to work there then. Afterwards, I worked for KUMU radio station and went overseas to Jakarta.”

Esposito returned to the U.S. and worked for 10 years in San Francisco, in sales at the San Francisco Bottling Company. But it was while visiting Hawaiʻi that a small, human moment clicked like a turnstile: a kind cashier at Longs Drugstore in Mānoa asking if she’d found everything okay.

“It struck me how much I missed Hawaiʻi. How people take the time to talk to people here,” she said. Esposito moved back home and moved into radio sales and, alongside raising a family and caring for her mother, enrolled at HPU.

“I was working at Pioneer Plaza and HPU is downstairs on Fort Street Mall,” she said. “I enrolled, went to night school, and on Saturdays, and it was perfect for me because they were flexible for working professionals.” She still lights up recalling HPU criminal justice Department Chair and Instructor Sheryl Sunia, M.S.C.J.A., a veteran crisis negotiator whose calm, humane approach to high-pressure situations “taught me to think differently under pressure.”

Poland’s story begins in Sturgis, South Dakota, where motorcycles roar each August for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Her father was a missionary and a carpenter, building the church  in Sturgis with his own two hands. When a storm-damaged congregation in Wahiawā needed rebuilding, he answered the call and the Potters moved to Oʻahu.

“It was great to be raised in the country in Hawaiʻi,” she said. “A wonderful upbringing. It was great to live in a small town then.” After a year at Pepperdine University, she felt the tug of home, returned to Hawaiʻi, and chose HPU. “I grew up knowing about HPU because of my mom worked as an accountant at Hawaii Pacific College (the College later became HPU in 1990). Poland joined the cheer squad, worked to support her studies, and majored in business marketing with a specialty in advertising.

Asked how HPU played a part in her successful career, Poland doesn’t hesitate.

“Tremendously,” she said. “It was real-life experience in the educational realm. I was working in marketing at the time too, so it was the best of both worlds, to work and be educated in marketing. The global education that HPU offers, where you are in a classroom with people from around the world was a game changer. Faculty mentorship mattered as well. (Faculty Emerita) Helen Varner’s real-life experience was invaluable for me. She ran her own advertising agency, and that experience made a great impact.” Poland also credits Economics Faculty Emeritus Ken Schoolland for sharpening her business lens.

Poland and Esposito’s careers overlapped at the dawn of major changes in the local media landscape. Print consolidations, station mergers, new platforms being invented every season. Poland cut her teeth selling the Wahiawa Sun Press newspaper but soon shifted to working at MidWeek, learning about the island one conversation at a time. She later stepped into television, carrying an agency-sharp instinct for connecting neighborhood stories to statewide strategy.

Esposito took a nudge from then-GM Rick Blangiardi to choose courage over fear.

“Hawaii News Now is so exciting, so wonderful, this is the only place to be,” Esposito said with a smile. “When Rick hired me from radio he said, ‘don’t let fear make this decision for you,’ and he encouraged me to think about the move to television. We had just merged stations. KGMB, KHNL, and K5 become one. It was both an exciting place to be and a lot to learn.”

Around the office, Poland and Esposito’s admiration for each other is easy and earned. “Sara works harder than anyone I know in this marketplace,” Esposito said. “She is highly respected in this community.” Poland returns the nod: “Donnie is fantastic. She has seen the evolution of media and television. She is the best, and an honor to work with her every day.”

When thinking back about their individualized, student-focused education at HPU, and the advice they would give to a student considering the University it becomes even clearer how important a small, private university is no matter what age you are when earning a degree.

“I would say the benefits of HPU are that it is a private education, with small class sizes,” Poland said. “You get specialized educational experiences, instead of being in a large lecture room at a state university. You have real-world experienced faculty members that make the education spectacular. You get to know your professors right away, as well.”

Esposito nods to both flexibility and community. “The small class sizes made a big difference, and it was convenient that the schedules worked out for me when working full-time,” she said. “What I really appreciated was the mix of students, the international students and the students from the neighbor islands of Hawaiʻi. That was an education in itself. That is what makes HPU special.”

When the conversation turned to happiness, the room got quiet. Esposito thought of a recent trip to Japan, and a phrase that framed her experiences there: ichi-go ichi-e, which translates into “be in the present.”

“I visited a temple with my sister and niece, and with us were six other people we did not know and would not see again. And because of that, I learned to treat those with kindness and respect. Because this moment will never be replicated. It set the tone for our trip, and I interacted and appreciated every moment. That is happiness. To live every moment. Life is made up of these moments that pass so quickly.”

Poland’s answer lands in the same place. “When I think of happiness, I think of balance, work-life balance,” she said, her voice catching. “The part of happiness that I encourage in my household with my three kids and husband is to love and appreciate time spent with family… they chose to stay in Hawaiʻi. My instinct was to fight that, but I am so glad that I didn’t because my whole family would be all over the world. What COVID taught me is you really must build happiness and moments in your life with your family. Those that mean the most to you. Because they go so, so fast. We lose our loved ones way too fast.”

In a market like Hawaiʻi, sales isn’t a script. It’s a relationship. Esposito and Poland will tell you it’s about showing up prepared, listening harder than you talk, and caring about the client’s outcome as much as your own goals. The lessons they carried from HPU, small classes, real-world faculty, learning to read the room and solve problems under pressure, became the toolkit they use every day, one partnership at a time.