Off the Clock: For Coldwell Banker Realty's Tania Michelle Mahoni, 'service is a part of my backbone'

How do members of Hawaii’s business community spend time outside of work? Pacific Business News looks to find out, asking business leaders about how they unwind away from the office.

PBN caught up with Tania Michelle Mahoni, an agent with Coldwell Banker Realty’s Diamond Head-Kahala office, who was licensed in 2018 and joined CBR in 2022.

How do you unwind at the end of the day? The end of my day can be at 3 p.m. or at 1 a.m., and anything in between. I am a workaholic and a perfectionist, so I must be at a point where I can mentally lay everything to the side and be okay about it. After that, it is all about family. I love to sit, eat and laugh with my husband, children and grandchildren, [and] talk about their day, their jobs. Family is my happy place. It is my everything. As chaotic as it can be with four grandchildren under the age of 7 running around my house at the end of my hectic day, it is what keeps everything in perspective. I am also a person of faith, so before my head hits the pillow, I will spend time bringing my spiritual side to a close.

What are you currently reading and/or watching? In my younger years I always had a book I was reading. Now, most reading comes from real estate work. I want to become as versed as I can be in my line of work, so I constantly take courses to increase the support I can offer my clients. I read anything to increase that knowledge [and also watch] YouTube tutorials or seminars. I do, however, at the end of every day, read scriptures. It is important that that is the last thing I close my mind with at the end of my day, no matter what time that may be.

Do you have any special hobbies or interests outside of work? I am a big softie, so I have always been involved in service one way or another, whether painting a kupuna’s house or coaching a soccer team. A few months ago, my husband and I took over 400 youth/adults on a youth camp for five days as the leaders. They trekked the mountains, huki’d the nets from the ocean, cleaned and cooked fish, learnt to weave with coconut leaves, provided service and a multitude of other things.

I have always been involved in community in one way or another — [I] wrote and directed the Oscar Mayer Weiner commercial submission for Laie Elementary School, in which they won $10,000 for their music department; headed fundraising events to provide math books and air conditioning units to the elementary school; choreographed numerous May Day programs, Christmas programs, floats for Hawaii parades; coached soccer teams for AYSO [American Youth Soccer Organization] for years [and] rugby teams for Hawaii Youth Rugby; … collected presents from communities for the Lokahi Giving Tree program and so much more. Service is a part of my backbone, so it truly brings me joy.

Outside of that, my husband and I have a Polynesian art company in which we provide Pacific Island koa wood carvings to local galleries around the island, including Martin and McArthur. This is a family business where my children have learnt to chainsaw from a tree stump, grind it down, polish, insert shark teeth, if needed, and lash. We have had this business for over 32 years and have provided carvings to film celebrities, kings, presidents, etc. Our family is a mixture of Cook Island, New Zealand Maori, Tongan and Samoan ethnicities, so running a Polynesian company has been a blessing for us.

What do you like most about living in Hawaii? I am a transplant to Hawaii of 40 years, so I now consider myself totally local! Born and raised in the Cook Islands, I am an island girl through and through, so after coming to university in Hawaii, I absolutely fell in love with it and couldn’t leave. It’s a melting pot of diverse cultures that make it so beautiful, so unique, but ultimately it is the aloha spirit that runs through the very center of this diversity that gives it its beauty. There is nothing like the aloha spirt. It is in the very fiber of the people [who] live here. I love the simplicity, genuineness and kindness of the people of Hawaii and the beauty and richness of its heritage and its lands.

What does an ideal Saturday look like to you? My grandchildren’s AYSO soccer games open up my day. Then it is trying to catch up on what wasn’t done during the week — yard work, which is very therapeutic for me; washing my dogs; going to Costco; and then having a dinner/date with my sweetheart. If there is a family activity – laying down an imu at the farm, going to the beach, hiking, babysitting my grandchildren etc. — then that is slotted in. Saturday is a busy day but it is an “all-about-family” day.

This is part of a web series called Off the Clock. Know someone we should talk to for this feature? Email reporter Stephanie Salmons at ssalmons@bizjournals.com.