Chad Blair has been a writer, editor and teacher in Honolulu for more than 25 years. His job as reporter and editor is to cover Hawaiʻi, especially how political decisions impact people and communities.

Chad has worked as a journalist for Pacific Business News, Hawaiʻi Public Radio and Honolulu Weekly. He has taught at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Honolulu Community College, Hawaiʻi Pacific University and Chaminade University of Honolulu.

A “military brat,” Chad was born on an Army base in Alabama and later lived with his family in Germany, Illinois, Nebraska and Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, where he edited the school newspaper. He also minored in Spanish and studied for a semester in Mexico.

Chad worked for a year on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where he tracked satellites for the U.S. Air Force/NORAD. He then earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in American studies from UH Manoa. His dissertation, “Democracy in Hawaiʻi: Class, Race and Gender in Local Politics” (1996), was published as “Money, Color and Sex in Hawaiʻi Politics” (Mutual Publishing; 1998).

You can reach him by email at cblair@civilbeat.org or follow him on Twitter at @chadblairCB.