Paul
Isaki has served as Governor’s Special Assistant for Business since late 2001,
working with implementation of final recommendations from the Washington
Competitiveness Council report. He
previously served as the Governor’s Chief of Staff and was Governor’s Special
Trade Representative, where he was the Governor’s principal adviser and
spokesman on strategic international trade and policy matters. He returned to state government service in
1999 after six years as Vice President of Business Development for the Seattle
Mariners.
Prior
to joining the Mariners, Isaki was a senior member of the administration of
Washington Governor Booth Gardner.
Isaki served as the Governor’s special assistant for international trade
and economic development from 1985-1990.
In 1990, Governor Gardner appointed Isaki director of the State of
Washington Department of Trade and Economic Development, where he served
through 1992.
National
recognition for Isaki’s leadership in Washington state’s export trade promotion
came in 1992, when the Ford Foundation and the Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University recognized the “Washington Village Project”, as a National
Finalist for their annual juried awards, “Innovation in State and Local
Government”. Isaki led the Washington
team of state government and forest products industry representatives, who
collaborated with their counterparts in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan (Washington’s
“sister state” in Japan) to design and build a 150 unit, “western style”
housing development in Kobe Japan. The
project was hugely successful. It
advanced the use of western homebuilding technology and finished wood products
from Washington in Japan’s important homebuilding industry. The project grew out of the relationship
between Washington’s Governor Gardner and Hyogo Prefecture’s Governor Kaihara
and the longstanding “Sister State” relationship enjoyed between the state and
the prefecture.