Papalii Dr. Tusi Avegalio is Director of the Pacific Business Center Program (PBCP) at the Shidler College of Business, University of Hawaii. Under his direction, PBCP received seven national awards for innovation, creativity, and effectiveness. Tusi is also the Executive Director of the Honolulu Minority Enterprise Business Development Center, and was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” for the U.S. Western Region in 2009.

Tusi has consulted throughout the Pacific for the ruling chiefs of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia, and for traditional village councils, community organizations, governments, colleges and universities, multinational corporations, and local businesses.  His work seeks to reconcile the perspectives of traditional wisdom and Western knowledge.

Tusi is a Polynesian Alii and holds the traditional honorific of Papalii, as he is heir to the Malietoa line of Samoa. His genealogical link to Hawaii can be traced in King Kalakaua’s publications on Hawaiian Legends and Myths, which map the movement of the Pili of Samoa to Hawaii in 1100 A.D.