Board of Directors

Allison Wong, President

Joyce Okano, Vice President

Vernon Wong, Treasurer

Matt Minaai, Assistant Treasurer

Ellen Chapman, Secretary

David-Emmanuel Charlot 

Christina Ho

Laura Ruby

Dale Ruff

Joseph Stanton

John B. Williams

Malia Van Heukelem, ex officio

Allison Wong most recently held the position of Deputy Director at the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA). Prior to her position at HoMA, Wong was the Executive Director of The Contemporary Museum (TCM) where she successfully worked on the merger of The Contemporary Museum and the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Wong was familiar to TCM where for more than ten years she held the position of Associate Curator and also served as the Curator of Exhibitions at First Hawaiian Center. Previously, Wong was Director of the Art in Public Places Program and the Hawaiʻi State Art Museum at the Hawaiʻi State Foundation on Culture and the Arts (HSCFA). She also serves as a commissioner for the HSCFA. Wong has also worked as an art consultant to architects, designers, developers, and private individuals. For her clients, she developed customized art programs that included planning and implementation from concept development through acquisition and installation of works by local and national artists.

Vernon Wong joined First Hawaiian Bank in 2005 and serves as Senior Vice President and Regional Business Manager for the Wealth Management Group. Prior to joining FHB, Vernon worked at Ameriprise Financial for 21 years, serving as it’s FVP, leading a team of over 100 Financial Advisors in Hawai‘i. Other community service includes the boards of Catholic Charities Hawai‘i and the Diamond Head Theatre. Vernon has over 36 years of experience in the financial services industry in Hawai‘i. He has a BA in Business Administration from the University of Hawai‘i and an MBA from Chaminade University. He is also a graduate of the Pacific Century Fellows program. Vernon served on Historic Hawaii Foundation’s Kama’aina of the Year committee; Executive committee; and the Budget and Finance committee. He and his wife Carla own a bungalow built in 1927 in Mānoa.

Matt Minaai works in First Hawaiian Bank's Commercial Banking Group. He has been in banking for over 7 years and his experience includes private banking, commercial banking, and wealth management. Matt received his Bachelor of Arts in economics from the University of Oregon and his Master of Arts in economics from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Matt has an appreciation for art, especially having participated in visual arts from a young age and having received the Best in Show award for the 2005 Congressional Arts Competition while in high school at Mid-Pacific Institute.

Ellen Chapman is a certified archivist and research librarian, working mostly at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Library, and is an archives consultant for non-profit cultural and educational organizations. She was a volunteer in the Jean Charlot Collection for many years and has been a staff member in the collection since mid-2016. She is an exhibiting artist and a member of many local arts organizations.

David-Emmanuel Charlot is a seasoned business executive specializing in corporate finance, turnarounds/workouts, organizational development, and business development.  David has served in enterprises from startups to large multinationals in automotive, general industry, clinical research, technology, and banking.  David is the son of John Charlot (former board member) and grandson of Jean Charlot.  He is active in family affairs including management of intellectual property rights and the preservation of the Jean and Zohmah Charlot House. David earned his BS in Accounting from New York University and MBA from Columbia University.

Christina Ho is the founder of Island Art Advisory and CMHO Fine Art. Educated at Brown University with an M.A. in Museum Studies and a B.A. in Visual Arts, she provides expertise on procuring art collections for her clients around the world, including high-profile art collectors, museums, hotels & resorts. From her time at Christie's Auction House to working with artists in the Venice Biennale, to frequent attendance of the world's top art fairs, she offers an informed sense of taste to building art collections large and small. Based in Honolulu, and between her time in NYC and Hong Kong, her goal is to create a bridge that brings the best of what these markets offer to Hawai'i, and to also make artists of Hawai'i more accessible to the wider audiences of the art world.

Joyce Okano is an advocate of Hawaiʻi’s artists. A University of Hawaii graduate with a B.S. in Fashion Merchandising, Okano’s career spanned 39 years from Associate Director of Gucci in SF, to West Coast VP for Chanel. She founded Hawaiʻi’s French Festival which flourished for 5 years, bringing together retailers, hotels, airlines, restaurants, museums, UH Art Department, and the Hawaii Visitors Convention Bureau during an economic downturn. Her efforts to help the Fine Arts in Hawaiʻi have included art exhibits in Chanel’s Waikiki Boutique in partnership with The Contemporary Museum; executing Satoru Abe’s 72 year retrospective; and fundraisers for Art Explorium and Friends of Hawaii State Art Museum (HiSAM).

Laura Ruby is a 2015 Hawaiʻi Living Treasure Honoree and a 2008 recipient of the Hawaiʻi Individual Artist Fellowship (the highest honor in the visual arts). Her prints and sculptures have been shown in national and international solo, juried, and invitational exhibitions.

Her essay and a selection of her prints from the "Nancy Drew Series" are published in Rediscovering Nancy Drew (1995). She continues to create her "Diamond Head Series" of prints and installation sculptures. She has created large site-specific sculptures including The Battle of Mōʻiliʻili (2016), Chinatown—Site of Passage (1994), Stage Set—Mise en Scene (1991), and Cromlech (1980). She taught art and honors at the University of Hawaiʻi for 34 years, and she edited the book Mōʻiliʻili—The Life of a Community (2005), and co-authored the books Honolulu Town (2012) and Honokaa Town (2015) with Ross W. Stephenson.

Dale Ruff is Regional Vice President of Louis Vuitton and has lived in Hawaiʻi for over 40 years. A native of Montana, he obtained his BA in Music from Montana State University at Billings. Ruff contributed to and supported the Creative Arts Program at REHAB Hospital of the Pacific, promoting rehabilitation and well-being through art therapy.

Joseph Stanton, who has lived in Hawaiʻi since 1972, is a Professor Emeritus of Art History and American Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. His Ph.D. is from New York University. His books of poems are Prevailing Winds (forthcoming in 2022), Moving Pictures, Things Seen, A Field Guide to the Wildlife of Suburban Oʻahu, Cardinal Points, Imaginary Museum: Poems on Art, and What the Kite Thinks. His other sorts of books include Looking for Edward Gorey, Stan Musial: A Biography, The Important Books: Children’s Picture Books as Art and Literature, and A Hawaiʻi Anthology. He has written widely on American artists—especially Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper. He occasionally teaches poetry workshops in New York City and Honolulu.

John B. Williams moved to Hawaii in 2012 after retiring as an architect in San Francisco, where his projects included offices, high rises, resort hotels and residences in California, Canada, Mexico, and Asia. Since 2016, he has been a Board Member and Treasurer of Docomomo US/Hawaii, which documents and advocates for Hawaii's MidCentury architecture. John managed Docomomo's project of saving, preserving, and reinstalling Isami Enomoto's historic 1961 Labor Murals that now are installed at UH-West Oahu. He is currently editing the expansion of Docomomo Hawaii’s online archive Hawaii Modernism Library, which now has 1,500+ photos, articles, and videos that document the state’s MidCentury architecture. John consulted with Historic Hawaii Foundation on their Annual Preservation Honors Awards in 2019 and 2020. He was also a volunteer with HHF updating their Historic Places web pages, and cataloged HHF's library of history and preservation books.

Malia Van Heukelem is the Art Archivist Librarian for the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM), Hamilton Library.  She is the Curator of the Jean Charlot Collection and also oversees the Archive of Hawaii Artists & Architects. Previously, she worked in the Library's Preservation Department, and has served as Collections Manager for the state's Art in Public Places Collection and for ‘Iolani Palace. She holds a BA in Studio Art, MLISc with a Certificate in Archival Studies, and Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation from UHM. She also has the following professional designations: Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation, Digital Archives Specialist and Certified Archivist.