Recapping University of Hawai’i BOR discussion on search for new athletic director

The search for the next athletic director for the University of Hawai’i at Manoa will begin expeditiously and will be as transparent as possible, new UH President Wendy Hensel said Thursday at UH-West Oahu in her first UH Board of Regents meeting.

The responsibility of finding a new AD for the Manoa campus that falls on Hensel’s shoulders is a result of her predecessor David Lassner dismissing former AD Craig Angelos from his position in November 2024. Lois Manin has served as acting AD since Dec. 2.

Before Hensel addressed the matter, several of the regents gave comments to help advise the process of the search.

Because Angelos was an at-will employee during his 18-month tenure, Lassner was able to fire him at anytime as Angelos’ direct report. To help prevent another sudden firing, Regent and former Gov. Neil Abercrombie emphasized the need to have a contract in place for the new AD.

“Whoever is selected as athletic directory should have a contract,” he said.

Abercrombie also recommended that Hensel utilizes an outside professional search firm to find quality candidates that could fill the position. He noted a good experience with the search firm WittKieffer, who was employed by UH in the presidential search that ultimately led to the hiring of Hensel.

BOR Chair Gabe Lee provided additional background context on the prior AD search that saw the selection of Angelos by explaining that Lassner selected the AD search committee himself and that everything was done internally before explaining the benefits of hiring a search firm and delving more into the topic of the AD contract.

“When you hire a search firm, you’re going to get a deeper list of possible candidates. It will be a geographically a little more complete than the last one,” said Lee.

“The other thing about the contract… with Regent Abercrombie and I as your designated sports liaisons, we’ve had a chance to talk to some experts in the field and you need a contract. That’s to get anybody to come on board, anybody of quality.”

Abercrombie and Lee also both highlighted the need for a professional search due to the ever-changing landscape of NCAA Division I athletics and the financial aspects, particularly relating to name, image and likeness.

In a previous agenda item, Abercrombie made mention of reading about Georgia transfer quarterback Carson Beck going to the University of Miami for $10 million in combined NIL deals and that College Football National Championship participant Ohio State has a $20 million roster.

“Athletics has changed over the years and will continue to change in the new few years too,” said Lee.

“This is going to take some professional effort, and it’s going to take more than a part time ‘I’ll be glad to help out’ kind of thing. I think we need a professional firm to run interference for you madam president,” Abercrombie said.

Regents Ernest Wilson, Diane Paloma and Vice Chair Laurie Tochiki also provided comments about the need for transparency and inclusiveness in the process. Paloma noted the number of testifiers, some of which were student athletes, during the November BOR meeting when Lassner addressed Angelos’ firing.

After all this, Hensel addressed the feedback from the regents.

“What I recognize is the significance of this issue to the community,” she said. “Certainly I think it’s fair to say I’ve had a decent volume of email on this particular topic and also conversations here in the first many weeks. I appreciate the weight of this and the significance of the responsibility especially as you’ve mentioned in a time of change really in athletics, both for the university, but also collegiate athletics in general.”

Hensel also affirmed Abercrombie that “there are search firms that specialize in this and have specialized teams that do this type of work so we will certainly reach out to them.”

It wasn’t explicitly stated in the meeting, but the official UH News web article that recapped Hensel’s UH-Manoa AD search update said the “firms will work closely with a search committee to identify and evaluate candidates.”

Before the BOR moved onto the next agenda item, Lee asked Hensel what the timing of this process could look like.

“Certainly will be soon,” Hensel said. “We need to do some initial steps to start procuring the search firm. There are some steps there, but obviously in anticipation of this, I’ve had some initial conversations to start identifying who in the community are the right people to sit on this search committee.”

Hensel noted that she was waiting for this conversation since she officially started at the start of the calendar year and wanted to hear the BOR’s advice on that matter so they can get started right away to fill the AD position.

“My hope is that we can have somebody in place by the end of the summer, if we’re lucky, at the beginning of the summer. It just depends how quickly this can all move forward with the importance steps we need to take to get community input so we will start immediately.”

Listen to the Board of Regents discussion on the search for the new Athletics Director + Ku’ulei Agbayani & Paul Brecht’s thoughts on this topic as heard on ‘Wake Up in The Den’: