Ralph Thomas Kam, Ph.D., APR, Fellow PRSA has had a distinguished career in public relations for more than four decades. In 2014, the Hawaii Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America, named him to its Hall of Honor, which recognizes those with distinguished and exemplary careers in public relations who have used the profession to help create understanding between the community and organizations or companies they represented. These respected individuals have played major roles in business and in furthering Hawaii’s economy through their use of strategic, well-planned public relations programs. This award is the highest the Hawaii chapter can bestow.

 

He has served in leadership positions in the nation’s premier professional society for public relations, including as president of the Hawai‘i chapter of PRSA, as chairman of the PRSA’s Western District, as a PRSA national board member, and as a member of the organization’s board of ethics and professional standards.

 

He was elected as a member of the College of Fellows, Public Relations Society of America, in 2001. The selection was made in recognition of a long and distinguished career in the practice of public relations, and for having long exhibited personal and professional qualities that have served as a role model for practitioners, and for having advanced the profession.

 

He is Accredited in Public Relations. PRSA's voluntary accreditation program recognizes those individuals experienced in the practice of public relations who have demonstrated through written and oral examinations their knowledge and ability.

 

His advanced academic degrees comprise an M.A. and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, specializing in Asian Pacific American studies and media studies, and an M.A. in Public Relations from the University of Southern California. He received a Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation in 2008.

 

With a primary research interest in nineteenth-century Hawaiian history, Kam is author of Death Rites and Hawaiian Royalty: Funerary Practices in the Kamehameha and Kalākaua Dynasties, 1819-1953, (McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2017) and co-author of Partners in Change: A Biographical Encyclopedia of American Protestant Missionaries in Hawai‘i and their Hawaiian and Tahitian Colleagues, 1820-1900 (2018). He contributed a chapter, titled, “The Legacy of Na Himeni Hawaii,” in Kōkua Aku, Kōkua Mai: Chiefs, Missionaries, and Five Transformations of the Hawaiian Kingdom (2018).

 

He has contributed ten articles to the Hawaiian Journal of History, including the most recent: “The Watchers: How Espionage Doomed the Counter-Revolution of 1895,” vol. 54 (2020).

 

He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa;

Hawai‘i Pacific University; and Chaminade University of Honolulu. He has served as dean of Honolulu Community College and as interim director of the historic preservation program at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.