Keoki Kerr honored for work in public relations, advocacy for public education
Posted: June 9, 2025
In front of communications colleagues from teachers’ unions across the country, Keoki Kerr, the Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association’s Director of Communications, won the prestigious 2025 Bill Guy PR Person of the Year award last month in Minneapolis.
The award recognizes excellence in public relations and honors an individual who is a tireless advocate for public education. It was presented to Kerr by the State Education Association Communicators (SEAComm) conference, a convening of communicators from state education associations across the country.
Kerr has been with HSTA for over nine years and has spent his tenure advocating for Hawaiʻi’s educators and amplifying their voices through strategic and impactful communication. He served as president of the educators’ communications organization SEAComm in 2023-2024.
With more than 25 years of experience as a TV reporter, Kerr brought his writing, media and public relations skills to the union to advocate for educators on a number of issues, including pay and benefits, increased education funding, and more.
WATCH: Commemorative video celebrates Kerr’s win
HSTA President Osa Tui, Jr. said, “I’ve seen him [Kerr] grow and blossom into this person who absolutely wants to advocate for the best for the students of the state of Hawaiʻi, for our public school educators. I just can’t thank him enough for everything that he’s done to improve our image.”
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Kerr started at HSTA in 2016 as a communications specialist during a time when the union’s communication operation was a one-person department.
At the direction of HSTA’s previous executive director Wilbert Holck, Kerr expanded the department over the years. He moved into the position of director of communications in 2018, adding a media specialist and two communications specialists to the department to further support the mission of HSTA.
An investigative reporter at heart, Kerr “loves taking up interesting stories, finding out things that might not have been reported anywhere else yet, and reporting them, first for our members and then for the public, and sharing those stories with the news media and the rest of the state and the nation.”
Ann Mahi, HSTA’s executive director, said of Kerr, “My first impression of Keoki was that he was just enthusiastic, positive, you know, kind of a dreamer and a visionary in terms of what he and wanted to see happen at HSTA, what he wanted to create in a comms department. That role of advocate was very clear.”
Kerr’s priority is to get clear, accurate, and timely information “out to to our membership, to the public, to lawmakers, to whoever so we can shine a light on what’s really going on and what might need to change, and we can suggest ways that we can improve public education in the islands,” Mahi added.
His communications leadership during crisis situations has been especially critical, namely during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Maui wildfires disaster, and recent federal public education cuts under the Trump administration.
“When there’s a crisis, people need accurate information as quickly as possible […] We want to get the word out. We want to explain what’s happening. We want to tell people how our members and students are being affected,” Kerr said.
Throughout his years at HSTA, Kerr has established the union as a trusted source of information, utilizing new media and technologies and changing with the times to ensure membership and the public are well-informed.
Kerr accepted the 2025 Bill Guy PR Person of the Year award on behalf of his communications department colleagues, HSTA staff and managers, and teacher leaders.
“They’re the ones providing the substance that we’re able to share with the state and the nation. So, this work isn’t done in a vacuum with just one person,” Kerr explained during a speech at the awards ceremony in Minneapolis in late May. “It takes all of us to do this work together.”
After finding out he won, Kerr said he was “really dumbstruck, and so grateful for the recognition from my colleagues in all these other states.”
“I joined a cadre of amazing people and friends and mentors, people who’ve helped train me from other states, who’ve been doing this longer than me, so I’m just so proud of being recognized,” he added.
Kerr spent decades as investigative, government reporter
Prior to joining HSTA, Kerr spent four years as an investigative reporter with Hawaiʻi News Now (the Honolulu CBS and NBC TV affiliate) and 21 years as a general assignment and investigative reporter at KITV, the state’s ABC TV affiliate, covering a number of beats — including city government for 12 years.
Kerr, who holds a bachelor’s degree in government with a concentration in American politics from Hamilton College in New York state, knew from an early age he wanted to be a reporter.
“As a kid, I always wanted to be a reporter. I was doing little fake TV newscasts for my parents when I was in fourth grade. I was so interested in current events and national news and local news, and I was doing this as a kid, and so, it was natural that I would continue doing this as an adult.”
Kerr started working as a production assistant and reporter at Honolulu radio station KGU in high school, and during college interned at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., where he worked with three of the founding mothers of NPR: Cokie Roberts, Nina Totenberg, and Linda Wertheimer. He also interned with and later worked as a press aide in Washington, D.C. for Hawaiʻi congresswoman Pat Saiki, writing news releases, floor statements, and more.
Throughout his college career, Kerr also served as a reporter, producer, and assignment editor at KITV during summer and winter breaks and debuted on KITV as an on-air reporter at the young age of 20. While he was an undergraduate, he also was a reporter, editor and anchor at newsradio stations in Honolulu and Utica, New York, served as news director and general manager at his college radio station and wrote for his college newspaper.
“I was just doing journalism in every form I could find,” he said, saying that he was primarily self-taught and learned journalism on the job with help from different mentors, including reporters, editors, anchors and news directors.
After his long tenure as reporter at KITV and Hawaiʻi News Now, Kerr decided he wanted to try something new and applied for the communications position at HSTA.
“After a 25-year career in TV news, I was excited to advocate for public school teachers… that’s why I love this job so much, because I get to advocate for public school educators and the keiki who they serve, and also continue learning about public education.”