A former bank executive who was born and raised on the Big Island is the newest member of Kamehameha Schools Board of Trustees.
Hawaiʻi probate court selected Eric Yeaman to fill the Ke Kula ʻo Kamehameha Board of Trustees seat previously occupied by term-limited Robert Nobriga, whose second term ended June 30, 2025.
Yeaman’s selection was announced Thursday, March 19. Trustees are court-appointed for 5-year terms and can serve up to two terms.
The finance executive — who was born and raised on the west side of Hawaiʻi Island — brings to the board more than three decades of executive and board leadership experience from throughout the state’s financial services, telecommunications, energy, health care, real estate and investment sectors.
He is founder and managing partner of Honolulu-based Hōkū Capital, a strategic advisory firm established in 2019 that also pursues investments in Hawaiʻi-based companies as well as national private equity and real estate funds.
Yeaman also since 2020 has been board chairperson of commercial real estate company Alexander & Baldwin, which operates grocery-anchored retail and select commercial assets throughout Hawaiʻi. The firm is the state’s largest owner of neighborhood shopping centers.
He previously served from 2015 to 2019 as president and chief operating officer of First Hawaiian Bank after leading Hawaiian Telcom as president and chief executive officer from 2008 to 2015.
Yeaman also served earlier in his career from 2000 to 2003 as chief financial officer of Kamehameha Schools and served in senior leadership roles at Hawaiian Electric Company and Hawaiian Electric Industries.
In addition to professional experience, Yeaman is deeply commited to community service.
He serves on the boards of Harold K.L. Castle Foundation, Friends of Hawaiʻi Charities and Hawaiʻi Asia Pacific Association. Previous service included as member of Kamehameha Schools Audit Committee and on the boards of The Queen’s Health Systems and The Queen’s Medical Center, including as chairperson from 2012 to 2017.
Yeaman is a graduate of University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting with distinction. He also is a certified public accountant in Hawaiʻi.
The finance executive grew up in Hōnaunau on the Big Island, raised by a single mother who worked as a waitress.
Yeaman told Civil Beat in December 2025 that the first time he ever boarded a plane was when he was 10 years old and headed to Oʻahu for the weeklong Hoʻomākaʻikaʻi, a Kamehameha Schools summer program with a longstanding mentoring tradition, teaching cultural values and practices to multiple generations of students.
It was during Hoʻomākaʻikaʻi when he really learned who he was as a Hawaiian.
Yeaman returned as an auditor years later in the late 1990s during what is dubbed the school’s “Broken Trust” era. He was part of a team charged with the responsibility to comb through the school’s finances and practices to uncover any financial mismanagement and self-dealing committed by board trustees at the time.
Kamehameha Schools now is at a crossroads, again facing a turbulent period and challenging future as the state’s largest private landowner with its original mission to provide education to Native Hawaiians.
Even its ability to continue upholding that mission — its founder Bernice Pauahi Pākī Bishop’s last wishes — is in question, at the center of a federal court battle lodged by an anti-affirmative action group.
“I want to go full circle and give back to an institution that has had a positive impact on my life,” Yeaman was quoted by Hawai‘i Public Radio in December 2025.
His experience managing complex organizations will likely be an asset that will help guide Kamehameha Schools through the next few years.
Yeaman and former trustee Nobriga are perhaps most similar in that way — both having finance backgrounds, with Nobriga currently serving as president of Hawaiʻi investment firm Tradewind Group.
There were 83 applicants for Nobriga’s seat. Yeaman was one of three finalists selected by the state probate court-appointed Trustee Screening Committee.
The other two finalists were startup entrepreneur Olin Lagon and hotelier Keith Vieira.
Nobriga was first appointed in 2013 to the board and reappointed in 2017. His second term was extended to comply with a requirement for staggered trustee terms — which began in 2001 following governance reforms instituted in 2000 — mandating terms be arranged so those of only two members can end the same year.
His serving until 2025 — a total of 12 years — prevented a conflict with the end of other trustee terms.
Kamehameha Schools trustees oversee assets worth about $15.2 billion and govern the school in accordance with instructions laid out by the will of Kamehameha I’s great-granddaughter Bishop, who died Oct. 16, 1884, with an estate comprised of some 375,500 acres of land throughout the islands.
Bishop thought education could offer Hawaiian people hope and a future. Thus, she established Kamehameha Schools — which began instruction in 1887 — in her will and endowed the institution with her estate.
Yeaman has called the Kamehameha Schools admission policy “the holy grail” and vowed to protect it and Bishop’s intent.
“Protecting the preference policy is a fundamental responsibility of the trustees and we have to defend it at all costs,” he was quoted by Hawai‘i Public Radio.
The board of trustees is composed of five people, each equally vested with the responsibility and duty of collectively setting school policy to carry out Bishop’s will.
Current board leadership includes Crystal Kauilani Rose as chairperson, Jennifer Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua as vice chairperson and Michelle Ka‘uhane as secretary/treasurer.
Elliot Kawaiho‘olana Mills rounds out the four sitting board members.
The board welcomes Yeaman to its ranks.
News reporter Nathan Christophel contributed to this story.
