The career Principal Ron Okamura wanted to pursue repeatedly changed in his earlier years. Despite being short, he played football in school. In fact his big dream at that age was to become the first Japanese NFL football player, but that was not meant to be.

During his junior year at college he started working at the YMCA as a counselor. He recruited and mentored high school seniors for their first year of college.

“I said ‘I kind of enjoy this!’” said Okamura when reminiscing of his time at the YMCA.

As it turned out, Okamura liked a social workplace. The job he was previously pursuing was too isolated for him, so he switched from majoring in business to majoring in education. He decided he wanted to be a teacher.

Okamura said, “I had to teach something that A: I liked and B: that there was a job for…. I loved history so I said I’ll be a history major; I’ll teach social studies.”

“Throughout my entire teaching career I wanted to have a bigger impact on students.… I wanted students to be the best prepared for what life offers and after high school,” Okamura said when asked why he went back to school for four years to become a principal.

Now he is the principal of McKinley High School – ranked number three on the chart of Hawaii’s best public schools, but Okamura plans for the school to rise higher than that.

When asked about his plans for getting McKinley into the top rank he responded with, ”By doing a lot of things for you folks, so that we can improve a lot of our academic programs…. “

It seems the principal has sturdy plans for McKinley, but remember in the beginning he wanted to be a chef. It took some time and some contemplating but in the end Principal Ron Okamura was content with the path he finally decided on.