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A former bakery owner turned tech economy builder, Trung Lam is positioning Hawai‘i's ocean and space industries as its next competitive advantage.
Photo Courtesy: Aaron YoshinoWhen the pandemic abruptly halted Hawai‘i’s tourism economy, Trung Lam observed something unprecedented: a significant concentration of technology talent living and working in the islands.
“For the first time ever, we had a real density of tech talent here,” Lam explains. “People who had always wanted to come home finally could — without giving up very high-paying jobs.”
This moment reinforced Lam’s long-held belief that technology could become more than a cyclical talking point in Hawai‘i’s economy; it could be a lasting pillar.
Today, as executive director and CEO of the Hawai‘i Technology Development Corporation (HTDC), Lam is working to transform this once-in-a-generation disruption into sustained economic growth.
“I grew up here, went away for school, and fully intended to stay on the continent,” Lam shares. He earned a mechanical engineering degree from the University of California, Davis, planning to build a tech career in California.
Life had other plans. “I followed the girl,” he says. “We’re married now and have three kids.” At the same time, his parents asked him to return home to help run the family bakery.
After returning to Hawai‘i, Lam earned an MBA from the University of Hawai‘i and spent 17 years managing the family business, La Tour Bakehouse in Iwilei. He applied what he calls an “engineering mindset” to every aspect of the operation.
Even while working in a traditional industry, Lam stayed deeply involved in the local tech ecosystem.
For years, he observed Hawai‘i repeating the same pattern. “Every time tourism drops, everyone says we need to diversify our economy through the technology sector,” he notes. “Then tourism comes back and it drowns out all the momentum.”
However, Covid broke that cycle. Estimates suggest that 40,000 to 50,000 remote tech workers spent time in Hawai‘i during the pandemic, including many kama‘āina returning from the mainland tech sector.
Recognizing the uniqueness of this moment, Lam co-founded the nonprofit ThriveHI to study and engage this workforce. This work brought him into close collaboration with HTDC, the state agency charged with growing Hawai‘i’s technology sector.
Since taking the helm of HTDC in June, Lam has emphasized strategic focus. “We don’t have unlimited resources, and every city wants to be a tech hub,” he says. “So the real question is: What is Hawai‘i’s value proposition?”
His answer centers on sectors where geography offers an advantage rather than a limitation. “If being surrounded by ocean is usually seen as a challenge,” Lam asks, “are there industries where that actually becomes a strength?” This perspective has led HTDC to prioritize ocean and space technologies — fields where Hawai‘i’s environment, infrastructure, and history of navigation naturally align.
