McMillan Promoted to EVP, Joins CommPac Executive Team

HONOLULU – Communications Pacific (CommPac) has promoted Cindy McMillan to executive vice president and elevated her to the firm’s three-member executive team, where she joins Kitty Lagareta, CEO, and Christina Kemmer, president.

“Over the nine years she has been at CommPac, Cindy has made a series of extraordinary contributions to the success of our company. She has helped clients through some extremely challenging issues, achieving successful outcomes for both clients and the community,” said Kitty Lagareta, CommPac chairman and CEO.

Since McMillan joined CommPac in 2002, she has taken on a succession of increasing challenges and wider responsibilities. Among her other responsibilities, she works with both government and private-sector clients on a variety of construction and development projects, as well as cultural issues, that require communicating intensively with communities throughout the state. Working to assist clients whose projects lie at the point, often at the grass roots, where government, community and business come together, McMillan and her colleagues have compiled an enviable record of building consensus among people and organizations that often have remarkably differing missions.

McMillan came to CommPac after five years as a legislative aide at the Honolulu City Council, where she developed considerable experience in strategic legislative and grass-roots outreach. During her time there, McMillan helped develop legislative strategy and worked closely with city and state agencies, neighborhood boards, the Legislature, the media and constituents. McMillan also served for a year as outreach coordinator for the City and County of Honolulu’s Primary Corridor Transportation Project, providing information about the project to target groups and stakeholders.

McMillan came to Hawai‘i in 1996 from Washington, D.C., where she was assistant director of the Joint National Committee for Languages and the National Council for Languages and International Studies (JNCL-NCLIS). There, among her numerous other activities, she lobbied Congress and federal agencies on behalf of the group’s 60 member organizations and developed and conducted grass-roots political advocacy workshops at state, regional and national conferences. With both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English, McMillan began her career as a high school and then a college-level English instructor. She acquired her first teaching experience – English and science – at a high school and teacher training college in Kenya.

Communications Pacific is Hawaii’s leading integrated communications company, offering public relations, marketing, community building, and land use and real estate services. CommPac partners with Gilbert & Associates, Paki Park Interactive and First Canoe to offer clients advertising and interactive communications services as well as new vistas in strategic consulting and relationship building. For more than four decades, CommPac has provided clients with strategic – and creative – communications counsel that gets results. It is a member of IPREX, one of the largest international partnerships of independent communications firms in major markets around the globe, providing clients with global reach while working with the local expertise of its award-winning partner firms.