Thirteen people submitted applications to be Guam Visitors Bureau president and chief executive officer, a position made vacant late last year when former Governor Carl Gutierrez stepped down from the position.
The applicants are both local and off island candidates with experiences ranging from tourism to marketing to politics.
The list, leaked to Kandit from multiple sources, includes:
Roque Aguon, Jr.
Edward Calvo
Brad Dean
Kaz Endo
Nico Fujisawa
John Heather
Regine Biscoe Lee
Jovyna Lujan
Bayron Martinez
Charles McJohn II
Daniel Nahoopii
Kenneth Perez
Matthew Siegel
The GVB board hires the agency’s president/CEO. The board has provided no indication as to when its members will make their selection.
Mr. Endo confirmed his candidacy with Kandit.
“I’m just stepping up and trying to help if my help is needed,” the business executive and marketing professional said. “Tourism needs more minds on it and I want to help use my experience and expertise to help right the course.”
He added, “There’s a lot of issues that’s causing the decline – some things we can control, some we can’t … and as an idea person, as a “doer” of things, I want to believe that we can put things in place that will help improve our situation. Above all, I think this is a community effort and I want to help where I can, through creativity, by listening and by example.”
2 Comments
Debbie Quinata
01/18/2025 at 5:14 PM
There’s no one that can do what Governor Gutierrez can do.
The reason the Board didn’t want Gov. Gutierrez heading GVB is because he wanted financial accountability from the Board, which non of those business folks could handle frankly because they are not honest and actually work to make money for their business forgetting the smaller businesses need support from the agency.
When will hey realize that they truly have no clue of what our visitors want and that’s to experience the Culture of the CHamoru people, not their made in China products that they shove down our visitors throats.
There is a new breed of visitors that don’t want to pay curbing fees just corralled into their high priced stores instead wanting to experience Guam and its beautiful natural environment . That in itself is why the don’t care about the conditions of our public parks around the entire island instead only pushing funds into a dead end location such as Timon has become!
Jesse Brown
01/20/2025 at 1:12 PM
Hey Debbie loved your comment. And YES, former Governor Carl Gutierrez did a good job as far as improving the tourism in Guam but I guess board members want something else. Carl tried to get his point across but it did not help. That’s ok Carl, we’lll see what happen and may the lucky one selected can do what you have done to bring tourist to Guam when the tourist counts was getting bad and then you brought them back. Good Job Governor Carl. You still the one!!!!