Speakers

Kawika was born and raised in San Diego. He graduated from Arizona State University with his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering in 2013, and his Masters in Power Systems Engineering in 2014. While in school, Kawika got his first exposure to the power industry as a substation design engineer intern. After graduating from college, he started working at Arizona Public Service (APS) as a rotational engineer. He gained experience in grid operations, generator protection/testing, substation design and apparatus engineering, after which he was permanently placed into grid operations. After years in grid operations at APS, Kawika made the move back to San Diego and joined SDG&E’s Grid Operation Engineering group as a Senior Engineer. In 2020 Kawika transitioned into the Supervisor of Outage Coordination, then in 2021 moved to be the Grid Operations Engineering Manager. In 2022 Kawika transitioned to the Grid Control Manager where he was responsible for the transmission operators and the support teams. After 15 months Kawika moved into his current position as the System Protection Manager. In 2021 Kawika completed his education goals by obtaining with his Masters in Business Administration.