Why Hawaii’s remote work program attracted ‘a different type of visitor’

When Nicole Lim, who was born and raised on Honolulu, heard last December about Movers and Shakas, a public-private initiative to bring remote workers to Hawaii temporarily, “I was viscerally upset about it,” she recalls. “I envisioned tech bros coming over and harassing dolphins and driving rents up.”

A month later, Lim put more of her fears to rest by becoming director of Movers and Shakas, which drew nearly 90,000 applicants for just 50 slots. “A few of the founding members reached out to encourage me to apply for the program,” Lim explains. “I was skeptical, but in my first conversation, I learned this was a local group of volunteer CEOs who had a lot of heart in it and had come together to help Hawaii.”

A longer-term goal is “about promoting brain gain — reversing brain drain and ideally preventing the brain drain we’ve talked a lot about in Hawaii since I grew up — in the tech and innovation sectors,” Lim says. “Companies have started here and often when they’re successful, they move to the mainland. So it’s really about how do we build that up ecosystem, that community, and hit that critical mass. It’s about creating that nucleus.”