Kevin Cockett, Vice President and Chief Communications Officer

Newly hired Vice President and Chief Communications Officer Kevin Cockett leads the Communications Group, and announced the following changes to his group in July.

WHAT is being reorganized?

The Communications Group, formerly known as Community Relations and Communications (CRC), is initiating a new division, Community Relations. Up until July, the Group included three divisions: Communications, Creative Services and Kamehameha Publishing. Under the new structure, the Communications Group is adding a fourth division — Community Relations. In addition, a new client services team is being added within the Communications division to better align with other major Groups that were recently formed in support of SP2020. The Communications Group is also integrating two positions that transferred from the Commercial Real Estate division (CRED) to support both structural changes described above.

WHY reorganize?

Communications is reorganizing to better align with larger institutional changes driven by SP2020, and striving to be more effective and efficient in support of Kamehameha Schools’ ongoing desire to operate as a “high-performing Native Hawaiian Organization,” as stated in SP2020. Moreover, by adding the Community Relations division, the Communications Group is strengthening KS‘ corporate community relations function in support of SP2020‘s emphasis on partnering, collaboration and collective impact, while also improving workload allocation, given necessary structural changes to the Communications division.

HOW and WHEN will the reorganization happen?

The Community Relations division will include three staff members: a director and two specialists. The newly created director position will be posted internally and externally. The current government relations position within the existing Communications division will be reclassified as a specialist in the Community Relations division. The other community relations specialist position will utilize one of the two transfers from CRED; this position will be posted internally. Both positions — director and specialist — will be posted by mid-August.

Within the Communications division, the previous Endowment support team is being separated into two teams: 1) the Regions Team, supporting the Community Engagement & Resources Group; and 2) the Finance Team, supporting the Finance Group. The second position transferred from CRED will be used to create a position for the manager of the Finance team. This position will be posted internally in the second half of August. The two other teams within the Communications division — supporting Education and Internal Communications — remain intact.

The Communications Group is also continuing with previously announced recruitment of a senior communications specialist for Hawai’i island to support that region, and for a senior Web developer to support the growing workload in that service area.

Communications Group org chart