After establishing his career in Seattle, Washington, local architect Chris Hong was drawn back to Hawai‘i in 2011 with a fervor for making his home a better place. That’s when he joined Group 70 International, a company co-founded by his father, Norman G.Y. Hong. Since being featured in Pacific Edge magazine in 2016, Hong parted from Group 70 to join local real estate firm Redmont Group as president of architecture.

He is currently finishing up his term as Honolulu chapter president of the American Institute of Architects, where he co-chaired the 2018 Design Symposium. “We live in a small community, and this symposium we called Building Voices: Livable Cities & Communities is really building the collective voices of people doing good work and trying to bring them together because we all have the same mission,” he says. “We’re all tackling some of the same issues.”

Hong has also started his term as vice president and president-elect for the Hawaii Architectural Foundation and will be starting his three-year term as president this year. He’s served on the Cal Poly College of Architecture & Environmental Design Dean’s Leadership Counsel, continues to teach once a year at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa and is on the build committee for Honolulu Habitat for Humanity.

His most recent—and, arguably, his biggest—move came in August 2018, when Hong left Redmont Group to start his own firm, Chris Hong Design. With this new and exciting endeavor, Hong is focusing on becoming a trusted advisor to clients looking to evolve their business, acting through a partnership rather than the typical company-client relationship. Though it’s too soon for Hong to provide any further detail, he hints at his company’s growing momentum in the coming months.