Meet the individuals volunteering their time to serve as AAJA Hawai‘i chapter’s 2026 board of directors:
Rick Quan, chapter president
Rick Quan has been the AAJA Hawai‘i chapter president since 2024. He is an Emmy award winning television journalist and documentarian.
He is the first Chinese American television sportscaster in the country and the first Asian American male to be a full time anchor in San Francisco.
Rick worked as a sports anchor for KITV in Honolulu during the 1980’s before moving to San Francisco where he covered sports for both the CBS and ABC affiliates. In 2020, he returned to KITV to work as the evening news anchor until 2024.
In 2023, Rick was inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ Silver Circle for his more than 25 years of broadcast excellence in the Northern California and Hawaii TV markets.
Rick now produces documentaries full-time on Asian American pioneers. His most recent documentaries were on Kauai’s Larry Ramos, the first Asian American to win a Grammy, and former piano prodigy Ginny Tiu, who now lives in Honolulu.
Jill Kuramoto, chapter vice president
Jill Kuramoto is a reporter and anchor at KHON2 News.
A veteran journalist with more than 20 years of experience in broadcast news, Jill has earned the Society of Professional Journalists Excellence Award in both the Feature Reporting and General News categories. She has also been recognized by the State of Hawaiʻi for her work promoting early childhood development and is a two-time Telly Award winner for excellence in video production.
In addition to her involvement with AAJA, Jill serves on the selection committee for the prestigious Living Treasures of Hawaiʻi™ program. She previously served as a commissioner with the Hawaiʻi State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and remains involved with the Honolulu Japanese Chamber of Commerce and the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaiʻi.
Jill holds a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Journalism from San Diego State University and a Master of Science in Public Relations from Quinnipiac University. She is also a graduate of the AAJA Executive Leadership Program.
Brenden Nakamine, treasurer
Brenden Nakamine is the News Director at KITV Island News in Honolulu and the treasurer of AAJA Hawaiʻi. He has more than a decade of experience in local television news, with leadership roles in Hawaiʻi, Kentucky, California and Nevada. Brenden is passionate about developing journalists, strengthening local storytelling and fostering newsrooms where diverse perspectives are valued. An AAJA member since 2023, he has supported local journalism through professional development, mentorship and community engagement initiatives.
He is a graduate of California State University, Northridge, where he studied broadcast journalism and currently lives in Waikīkī with his wife and their two dogs.
Diane S. W. Lee, board member and webmaster
Diane is the multimedia and engagement editor at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. She joined the Star-Advertiser in June 2018.
Prior to that, she worked at Honolulu and Honolulu Family magazines for over five years. Her multimedia work was honored in 2017 and 2018 with national finalist awards in Multiplatform Storytelling by the National City and Regional Magazine Association. Over the years, she has earned multiple state digital journalism awards from the Hawai‘i Society of Professional Journalists and the Hawai‘i Publishers Association.
Born and raised in Honolulu, Lee is a graduate of McKinley High School and among the first in her family to attend college and graduate with a Master’s degree. She is a proud alumnus of the Poynter and The Washington Post 2020-21 Leadership Academy for Diversity in Digital Media, and Chips Quinn Scholars program. She has served as a volunteer board member on the Hawai‘i chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association since 2022. She is fluent in Cantonese-Chinese and lives in Honolulu with her husband.
Noelle Fujii-Oride, secretary
Noelle Fujii-Oride is a Kaua‘i reporter for Civil Beat. Kaua‘i became her home at the end of 2019 and is where she developed her love for community-centered journalism. Her goal is to tell stories that reflect the lived experiences of the people who know Kaua‘i best, honor the history and culture that shape it, and reflect the relationships and responsibilities that hold this community together. She believes that local journalism is built on relationships, so she invests in getting to know the people and places she covers and approaching each story with the care it deserves.
Originally from the Bay Area, Noelle is a graduate of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s journalism program (2016) and AAJA’s VOICES (2016) and Executive Leadership programs (2022).
Julianna Kim, board member
Juliana Kim is a general assignment reporter at NPR where she tells stories for both on-air and digital. Her work has appeared on NPR’s Up First, The Indicator from Planet Money and It’s Been a Minute. Previously, she covered education at WPLN in Nashville, Tenn. In 2020, she was a metro reporting fellow at the The New York Times.
Kim grew up in Flushing, Queens, in New York City.
Caroline Julian-Freitas, board member
As the director of communications and community, Caroline is responsible for managing all communications campaigns and programs in support of Ulupono’s mission to improve the quality of life for the people of Hawaiʻi through sustainable solutions.
Caroline joined Ulupono Initiative in July 2022 and has more than a decade of experience working in the government sector. Caroline’s extensive experience includes serving as the director of communications for the State of Hawaiʻi’s Office of the Lieutenant Governor, Hawaiʻi State Senate director of communications, and the senior communications manager for the State Office of Enterprise Technology Services.
Before her experience in government, Caroline worked as a broadcast journalist at television stations in Hawaiʻi and the ABC News Network. Caroline is a proud graduate of the University of Hawaiʻi School of Journalism and lives in Honolulu with her husband and two children.
Wes Nakama, national advisory board representative
Wes Nakama is a freelance sports reporter entering his fifth year under contract with ESPN Honolulu to write articles on high school sports for the station’s website. He also serves as a color analyst for ESPN Honolulu’s radio coverage of high school football and manages WarriorInsider.net, a website focused on University of Hawai‘i men’s basketball.
Wes spent most of his career as a sports writer for Sun Press Newspapers, the Boca Raton (Fla.) News, the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, The Honolulu Advertiser and ScoringLive.com
He has served on the AAJA Hawai‘i chapter board since 2004, including terms as vice president, president and National Advisory Board representative. Wes earned a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, where he served as sports editor of the campus daily, Ka Leo O Hawai‘i.
You must be logged in to post a comment.