Richard & Priscilla Kalbrener Student Community Service Scholarship

The Richard and Priscilla Kalbrener Student Community Service Scholarship is created to develop a recognition system to encourage students to participate in voluntary community service. Every year scholarships will be awarded to outstanding college students who, through their service, volunteerism, dedication and commitment to their community, greatly enhance civic life in the Winona and surrounding communities and embodies the true spirit of civic engagement.

Criteria

Each recipient must be an undergraduate student, sophomore or junior, enrolled full-time (i.e., minimum of twelve credits per semester) at Winona State University
Demonstration of strong financial need as determined by the WSU Financial Aid office
Minimum G.P.A. of 3.0

Biography/Motivation

Richard “Rich” Harris Kalbrener was a humanitarian, entrepreneur, and telecom pioneer. He was raised in Winona, Minnesota and graduated from Winona State University, thereafter spending most of his life and career in Honolulu with his loving wife Priscilla and daughter Melissa.

A position as a Xerox representative brought him to Hawaii, and in 1981 he founded Long Distance USA in Honolulu. The growing innovative company was acquired by Sprint in 1989. He remained as President at Sprint for six years before moving to Hong Kong in 1996. There he served three years as the Regional President of Global One, a joint venture of Deutsche Telecom, France Telecom, and Sprint serving the Asia-Pacific region. Returning back to Hawaii in 1999, he was recruited to head up Pacific Internet Exchange (PIXC), later re-branded as Pihana Pacific, a company which built, owned and operated world-class, carrier-neutral data centers in Asia and Hawaii. In his retirement, he served on many boards including Digital Delivery Networks, Inc., Hiawatha Broadband Communications and Winona State University.

Rich and Priscilla traveled the world extensively, always finding new countries to explore. Although he moved to Hawaii in 1973, he kept one foot on the mainland by keeping a family summer home in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho where they would spend six months of every year in their retirement. Rich enjoyed cooking classes and creating exotic culinary delights in his own kitchen, regularly cooking with red wine, and occasionally including it as an ingredient.

During his lifetime he made such a positive impact on the many lives of all those he did business with, those who worked with him, his many friends and of course, his family. Rich was always kind, caring, and generous, sharing his success with others and inspiring so many to be successful with his encouraging attitude. He had a robust laugh, a big smile and an even bigger heart!