Oahu’s Aloha Stadium has been part of Michael Iosua’s life for almost as long as he can remember. In his younger years, he shopped at the swap meet and spent Saturdays in the stands, cheering on the University of Hawaii football team. During college, it was his home field when he played defensive lineman for the Rainbow Warriors. Now he attends football games there with his own family, and he has just completed a term as president of the N Koa Football Club, the University of Hawaii’s official booster organization.
With all that history, it seems only fitting that Iosua is also playing a role in Aloha Stadium’s future. In 2014 he was appointed by Governor David Ige to Hawaii’s nine-member Stadium Authority. In his two terms on the board, Iosua has chaired the internal governance committee and overseen the stadium’s budget, personnel, and maintenance.
But Iosua’s overarching task, together with his colleagues, has been studying and making recommendations for rebuilding the aging structure and developing the hundred acres of prime real estate that it sits on. The project is one of the largest public-private efforts in the state’s history. After six years of work, plans are now in place to turn the area into a “destination” that will also include restaurants, retail and office space, residential areas, and hotels.
Though the larger development will be years in the making, the stadium is slated to be ready for the 2024 football season. “It’s especially gratifying for me, being a former University of Hawaii football player, to be a part of redeveloping this and giving the team a good place to play,” says Iosua.
Serving on the Stadium Authority is just one of the community projects Iosua is involved in. He is a member of the board of directors for Kahuku Medical Center, and he also works with a coalition of nonprofit organizations and businesses that are trying to increase affordable housing in Hawaii. These pursuits, as well as his efforts in helping the Maui Health System enter into a public-private partnership, led to him being named to Hawaii’s 40 Under 40 list in 2017—an annual award for young leaders who are helping to shape the state’s business community.
Professionally, Iosua is a partner at Imanaka Asato, a full-service law firm in Honolulu. He leads the practice’s government affairs group, which advises both government and private clients on issues related to local market entry, public procurement, land use, community engagement, legislative planning, and public policy. Iosua has also advised numerous candidates on state campaign spending and ethics laws. Before returning to his native Hawaii in 2013, he worked as a litigator at Snell & Wilmer in Las Vegas and as assistant attorney general for American Samoa.
Iosua earned a BA in economics from the University of Hawaii in 2002 and graduated from the joint MBA/JD program at BYU Marriott and BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School in 2009. Iosua credits his experiences at BYU Marriott with teaching him to present himself well, think on his feet, and communicate in a clear and concise way. “Even though I practice law, a lot of my work has to do with business, so my MBA has been a real asset to me,” he says. “Knowing how to look at financial statements, find information, and know which questions to ask has served me well, especially in my community service activities.”
Iosua lives in Honolulu with his wife, Kapu, and their five children. Their favorite activities involve being together as a family, and Iosua says he especially enjoys watching their kids play sports. Someday in the not-too-distant future, that may give Iosua another reason to connect with Aloha Stadium—as a proud parent watching his children compete in the facility he helped create.
