“I feel like Hawai‘i is kind of at a tipping point.”
Most mornings, Sunshine Topping starts her day with a surf session at her home break, Kaisers, on O‘ahu’s South Shore. For the Hawai‘i Island native who grew up in the ocean, surfing is integral to who she is. “Dawn patrol” is not just what she’s always done, but it’s what her great-great grandmother did, as well.
This is just part of why – and how – Topping loves Hawai‘i. “It’s a connection at an elemental level. I feel very much like Hawai‘i is where I belong. I feel extremely connected to the place of it,” she describes. “I’m tenacious about living here, staying here, and creating a place where my kids can spend their lives here, as my husband and I have been able to do.”
Topping and her husband Miles have three children; two daughters currently in out-of-state colleges, and a son in high school (or maybe four children if you count her new “baby”, a two-and-a-half-year-old rescue dog, Maluhia).
Yet, she knows how hard it is to afford the price of this paradise. Topping grew up in the Hawaiian Home Land neighborhood of Keaukaha in Hilo. “Middle class would be pretty generous to describe my upbringing as one of nine kids,” as she puts it.
This love for her homeland and a tenacious vow to live her life in it, paired with her understanding of the desperate and draining head-above-water middle-class-existence, drive her passion. She calls her professional efforts her form of social activism.
After she graduated from Hilo High School, Topping left the state. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and returned home to Hawai‘i to earn her Master of Public Health degree from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
She then focused her career on workforce development. “I just feel an automatic desire to help. I’ve been able to make it work and I want to help other people be able to make it work, too,” explains Topping.
She’s held executive positions at Hawaiian Airlines, ‘ike, Hawaiian Telcom, Hawai‘i Pacific Health, and currently, The Omidyar Group, where she is the Hawai‘i Lead, responsible for all of TOG’s efforts in Hawai‘i.
Topping joined this board because Holomua’s mission and values align with hers. “I am fascinated with the idea of bringing different groups together to find where there’s alignment, as opposed to constantly looking at where there’s difference.
“Trying to help Hawai‘i be a place where people can stay is something I’m very passionate about. Seeing how many of us [Native Hawaiians] are leaving – the fact that there are more Native Hawaiians on the mainland than here is absolutely painful – and trying to create an environment where Native Hawaiians can stay where we belong – and where everybody can live a life that isn’t quite so stressful financially – is the goal,” she articulates, sharing that even she and her family would not be able to own their house were it not for family assistance.
But, she hopes, we’re close. “I feel like Hawai‘i is kind of at a tipping point,” she expresses. Topping hopes to add to the collective push to tip us in the right direction.
