About
Norm Oshiro ultimately spent decades leading people, teams, and organizations, where he hired, assessed and ranked, mentored, rewarded and promoted, confronted performance issues, terminated, and also had to lay off many people due to corporate cutbacks.
Education & Certifications:
BA in Sociology (inter-ethnic relations), University of Hawaii (UH) at Hilo.
MS in Meteorology, UH Manoa.
Executive MBA, University of Southern California (USC), Marshall School of Business.
Credentialed as a Project Management Professional (PMP) through the Project Management Institute (PMI), and has an ITIL V3 Foundation Certification.
Career and Management Experience:
Undergraduate and Graduate Meteorology Research Assistantships.
Meteorology Field Manager for UH’s 5-year Statewide Wind Energy Research Project from 1977.
Hired by Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in 1983 in Hawaii, and eventually transferred to the mainland US.
Started as a programmer/systems engineer (SE), moved up to team leader, promoted to SE Supervisor, SE Manager, Account Manager, then Organization Manager.
Advanced to Expert level Project/Program Manager.
Retired from EDS/Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2015 after 32+ years.
Highest Organizational Management Level:
Manager for EDS’ 192-person Southern California Systems Engineering/Solution Center.
Oshiro was born and raised in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii, in a diverse multi-cultural neighborhood and community. His Hawaii roots inspired the book’s cover as well as the cover’s subtext: “A barefoot kid's journey from climbing coconut and guava trees in Hawaii to climbing the corporate ladder.”
He himself never did that well in the classroom from elementary through high school, including his first two years in college, spending too much of his time surfing, until a mentor finally got him inspired to reach for a better future.
Oshiro lives in Southern California with his wife of 46 years (friends since the 3rd grade), and they still travel to the Big Island at least once per year. He enjoys road course track days, drag racing, video editing, and listening to all types of music (except jazz). Their son, who is also involved in Motorsports, and his wife also live in Southern California.
