FROM MODEL UN TO HAWAI‘I STATE CAPITOL
When Hurricane Lala knocked out power across much of Puna in August, JB Araula got busy coordinating social media updates for residents. Stuck at his State Capitol office two islands away and with no way to get on the ground, JB (pictured far right) says he felt almost useless those first few days — all he could do was vet incoming reports and push out resources. Then the messages from constituents started coming in, with one person telling him the updates were lifesaving.
“The politics and the policy of working in the legislature are interesting,” says JB, who runs the office for State Rep. Greggor Ilagan. “But the people you can really do something meaningful for, even if it’s just gathering information from afar — that’s what public service is really about.”
It’s a philosophy that’s guided JB as he makes his mark at the Hawai‘i State Legislature. As the sole office staffer for Rep. Ilagan, he’s responsible for scheduling, constituent outreach, and legislation — a level of responsibility that would turn heads at any age, and JB is just four years out of high school. Still, when you ask him what stands out most about the job, he jumps straight to moments like the Lala response, not the bills he’s helped move.
JB’s path to the Capitol started years earlier on Kaua‘i. He immigrated from the Philippines in 2013, and his mother enrolled him at HTA after a chance meeting at a mall admissions fair with then-Līhu‘e campus director Traci Sullivan, who now serves as HTA’s statewide Director of Academics.
When JB started as a freshman at the Līhu‘e campus, Mrs. Sullivan introduced him to Model United Nations. At the time, it was just a three-person pilot club, but Mrs. Sullivan noticed his interest. Over the next few years, the two of them built the club into a fifteen-person traveling team that competed as far away as Vancouver. It was there, arguing across the aisle on behalf of imaginary nations, that JB says he learned to listen as much as he spoke.
“You have to think on your feet and be really diplomatic in how you speak,” he says. “I met people from all over the world that I still keep in touch with today.”
JB still chairs the Pacific Model UN conference and mentors HTA Līhu‘e’s Model UN team where he first started.
JB’s interest in policy and politics continued at UH-Mānoa, where he studied political science and Filipino arts, culture, and language. An internship on Washington D.C.’s Capitol Hill put him in U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda’s office, learning how legislation gets written and negotiated. He graduated from UH in December 2025, and when he ran into Rep. Tokuda at a rally, she connected him with a job in the State Legislature.
On the job, two issues have really grabbed his attention: agriculture and housing. Invasive species such as the coconut rhinoceros beetle are chipping away at Hawaiʻi’s already-fragile farming industry, and JB sees room for the state to modernize protections. Housing is thornier: building enough affordable homes to keep people from leaving the island means asking longtime residents to accept change they’re not always eager for — a conversation he says gets tricky very quickly.
JB isn’t necessarily angling for elected office himself. When he thinks back to those first uncertain days of the Lala response, he doesn’t need convincing that the boots-on-the-ground work counts. And when Hurricane Lowell hit his home island of Kaua‘i mere weeks later, JB was on the ground getting his hands dirty and helping his home island recover from the devastation. Whether the work looks like a laptop or a ladder, what matters most for JB is showing up for his community.
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