Bettina Mehnert speaks to designing with a purpose and planning for a sustainable future in episode 3 of The Hawaii Business Podcast.
Raised in the tiny town of Grevenbroich, Germany, Bettina Mehnert originally didn’t want to become an architect. She had an industrious personality and followed in her mother’s footsteps and became a carpenter.
But that eventually drew her to architecture, and she became the third generation in her family to enter the field. She moved to Hawai‘i in 1988 and has been with Honolulu-based architectural firm AHL ever since. She became the firm’s first female CEO in 2013.