About

Gloria C Borland

When Gloria was a 15 year old Radford High School student, she was selected to represent the state of Hawai‘i at a national Girl Scout conference in Washington, DC. During that summer of 1972, Congressman Spark Matsunaga invited Hawai‘i's top girl scout to lunch at the U.S. Capitol.

During their meeting, Congressman Matsunaga told Gloria about his vision to create a "Peace Academy" to balance the military academies we have for war, like West Point. He felt the United States needed an academy for people to study peace. Twelve years later and now a US Senator, Spark Matsunaga's dream came true with the opening of the US Institute of Peace located near the State Department. Gloria soon realized people from Hawai‘i have the unique ability to make important things happen.

While attending George Washington University, she was hired by Senator Daniel K. Inouye. As a young senate staffer, she watched Senator Inouye solve many of our nation's problems.

Gloria volunteered to help Congresswoman Patsy Mink and the Capitol Hill Women's Political Caucus. She participated in the historic National Women's Conference in 1977.

After college at age 21, Gloria started a magazine publishing business covering the travel industry, with editions in Washington, Philadelphia and New York. She spent her twenties as a publisher covering tourism around the world. In her early thirties, she founded a cable TV channel with international programs and movies. She also created and produced a television series, "The Business Owners with Gloria Borland" that profiled minority entrepreneurs and aired on 150 PBS stations nationwide. The series was underwritten by The Wall Street Journal.

Gloria was hired by Independent Presidential Candidate Ross Perot to be the campaign director for his Washington, DC office where she managed the national political press. The 1992 Perot campaign exploded onto the national scene in a dramatic fashion and Gloria was a part of it. At 35, Gloria Borland was the youngest and first woman of color in strategic leadership of a US presidential campaign.

While Barack Obama was running for president, Gloria observed the political press’ misunderstanding of him. The media expected Obama to behave according to stereotypes when in fact, he grew up in Hawai‘i. People from Hawai‘i think and behave differently, and the idea for a documentary "Barack Obama: Made in Hawai‘i" that explains Obama's Hawai‘i roots, emerged.

Gloria moved back home to help tell the incredible stories of Hawai‘i's Obama, Inouye, Mink and Matsunaga. She has 40 years of Washington, DC experience, combined with recognizing the innate talent that comes from Hawai‘i. People from Hawai‘i are usually underestimated when they arrive in DC, but in a short amount of time, they become influential leaders of our country. It is because they were raised in a special place, in the middle of the Pacific, that their individual lives did make a powerful impact in the world.

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