W. David Carey III, JD ’81, MBA ’82

President and CEO of Outrigger Enterprises, Inc.

At a fraternity party at Stanford in 1976, W. David Carey III met someone who would change the course of his life both personally and professionally: Kathy Kelley, a freshman who played soccer for Stanford—on the freshman men's team. His relationship with Kathy and her family would take David far from the mountains of Colorado, where his family had a turn-of-the-century cabin and he spent nearly every weekend skiing, to an island paradise where his vision would turn a local business into an international hospitality enterprise and would revitalize a romantic, world-known landmark.

David had enrolled in Stanford in 1973 with plans to study computer science and play competitive golf. Stanford at the time didn't offer computer science, so he studied electrical engineering. He was advised that this major would be too demanding to also play golf, so he played soccer.

David had heard of Kathy prior to the fraternity party (she played on the freshman men's team until the women's team started up). The two of them began dating. She invited him for a trip to Hawaii, where she was from.

"We were sitting on the sea wall," he recalls. "It was 78 degrees. The moon was shining on water and there was a gentle breeze. I said, ‘Is it like this all the time?' The next day, I went sailing with her dad. I had no idea what the family business was, but he suggested that if I wanted to come back, I could work in one of the hotels." That was 32 years ago. David admits that he's been emotionally in Hawaii ever since that evening on the seawall.

Kathy's family's business at the time, Outrigger Hotels, established by her grandfather Roy Kelley, an architect, was run by her father, Richard Kelley, a Stanford and Harvard-educated M.D. and entrepreneur. The company owned and operated hotels on Waikiki Beach aimed at tourists on a budget.

After graduating from Stanford in 1977, David moved to Honolulu and worked his way up, from front desk clerk, cashier, and management trainee to an assistant manager. (Kathy stayed in Palo Alto, finishing up a communications degree at Stanford.) In his work, David kept running into lawyers, and became interested in law. Richard Kelley encouraged him to apply to law school, and he chose Santa Clara, in part to be close to Kathy.

After his first year of law school, David returned to Hawaii to work for the company, Outrigger Hotels (and get married to Kathy). He saw that his law degree might be a step into the world of business and that an MBA would round out his education. He enrolled in the MBA program. He received his law degree, cum laude, in 1981 and his MBA with distinction in 1982. Having the hotel business as the context for law school and business school made his education "extraordinarily relevant," he says.

David and Kathy moved to Hawaii. David joined a general law firm Carlsmith Wichman Case Mukai and Ichiki, where he was exposed to many areas of the law before settling into real estate and corporate law. He began doing legal work for Outrigger in the areas of acquisitions and, in 1986, was pulled back into the business. He became its Executive Vice President and General Counsel in 1986, President in 1988 and CEO in 1994.

Under his leadership Outrigger expanded beyond its 13 hotels on Waikiki, acquiring hotels throughout the Pacific. He placed some of the original hotels under the newly created OHANA brand, reserving the legacy Outrigger brand for the company's upscale, beachfront resorts and condominium collection. Outrigger became Outrigger Enterprises, Inc., a diversified international company, that includes Outrigger Hotels & Resorts, the largest independently owned lodging company in Hawaii, which has more than 2500 employees and 47 properties with close to 12,000 rooms located in Hawaii, Australia, Guam, Fiji, Palau, Bali and Phuket, Thailand.

In bringing the company this far, David has relied on all of the skills he learned in undergraduate school (the technology degree paid off as hotel services moved online), law school, and business school. The culmination of ten years of work both in the office and the community and the crown jewel of Outrigger, Waikiki Beach Walk, opened in November 2006 to a crowd of 3,000. Credited with restoring the "romance and magic" of Waikiki, the $800 million dollar Beach Walk is a high-end complex of three hotels, 40 retail stores and six restaurants.

Part of David's job has been to take an active role in the island community life, which he enjoys. One surprise has been how he has come to support the role of the military in Hawaii. Without a military background he did not expect to be a strong supporter of the military, but all it took was "getting to know them," he says. Now he makes sure that the hotels are affordable to military personnel, offering discounts to enlisted members. He is the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce's Military Affairs Council.

He and Kathy, an assistant soccer coach for University of Hawaii, are both jocks. Kathy competes in racket ball and body surfs three times a week. David golfs (his handicap is 3, "good for a guy with a real job" he says) and plays tennis. They have four children between 18 and 25, all currently in California. One son studies at Santa Clara as do his niece and nephew.

David says he enjoyed studying at Santa Clara Law School. "What I really enjoyed was that I had a good range of solid teachers with good experience and a great network of friends. I learned about a wide variety of things touching all phases of life-the whole human experience."

For David, education is paramount. He serves on the board of trustees of Punahou School and has been on the advisory council of the University of Hawaii's College of Business. He works with Hawaii's Department of Education to strengthen the islands' public schools. It's not just classroom education that he values. He says, "The world is school. You will always gain something from learning. You don't always know what it is at the time, but it will be there when you need it."

David has received many awards in Hawaii for his role as a leader of the tourism industry and for his work to improve his community. The Alumni Award, he says, is especially meaningful to him, because "he didn't see it coming." He hopes it will be the beginning of reconnecting with his classmates and friends on the mainland.