Office of Hawaiian Affairs Gets New COO

Richard Pezzulo is the new Chief Operating Officer at OHA. Photo courtesy of OHA.

By Sonia Isotov

Today, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) announced that Richard Pezzulo is its new Chief Operating Officer. Pezzulo previously served as Chief Financial Officer at OHA since 2008.

Pezzulo replaces Stanton Enomoto, who has been named Climate Change Cultural Adaptation Coordinator with the U.S. National Park Service.

Pezzulo has more than 20 years of operations and fiscal management experience and has managed multi-million dollar contracts promoting business in Papua, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

Prior to his tenure at OHA, Pezzulo served as the executive director at Empower Oahu where he worked to assist economically distressed communities on Oahu through programs in micro-enterprise and community-strengthening.

OHA is a state agency and trust that advocates for Native Hawaiians and is overseen by a 9-member Board of Trustees elected by voters statewide.