Jeff Tucker is co-founder and editor of Beat of Hawaii, where he is the front-line researcher behind the stories we publish. He finds and initially vets the majority of the subjects we consider, looking for what is actually new and whether there is a Beat of Hawaii angle worth pursuing. Jeff often handles the initial research and drafting before sharing the work with co-founder and editor Rob Kvidt. From there, the two go back and forth on the reporting, writing and editing before an article is published. Jeff also finds and implements the technology behind Beat of Hawaii, a role that suits someone who remains a self-described tech nerd.
Jeff’s relationship with Hawaii began long before Beat of Hawaii. He started visiting as a teenager and first arrived on Kauai through the old Princeville Airport when he was 19. While continuing a career based in Southern California and elsewhere, he began renting a house on Kauai’s North Shore in his 30s and continued returning there into his 40s. Eventually, he grew tired of the North Shore’s cloudy winters and ventured down to Poipu, a part of Kauai he hadn’t previously regarded very highly. That all changed. He first bought a condo, and later a house, and began what has now been a more than three-decade love affair with Kauai’s South Shore. The North Shore never lost its pull, however. Jeff and Rob are both long-distance swimmers, and Hanalei Bay remains their favorite place to swim in summer. Jeff typically swims about three miles a week.
Before Beat of Hawaii, Jeff spent nearly 30 years running his own technology consulting company, helping design and develop project management and other systems for some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry. His work included some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, as well as projects involving leading producers, directors and performers. At one point, he managed a group of about 30 consultants who traveled globally, which turned him into an unofficial in-house travel agent charged with finding good airfares and accommodations, workable itineraries and creative ways to keep travel costs under control. That combination of technology, problem solving and travel eventually found a new home at Beat of Hawaii.
Air travel has fascinated Jeff since he was a youngster. His first flight was from Los Angeles to London when he was 15, beginning a lifetime of flying that has since totaled millions of miles. He has traveled throughout the world except South America, has made roughly 50 trips to Europe and lived for periods in Dublin and Paris. These days, much of his travel centers on Hawaii, the South Pacific, and Europe, with French Polynesia a regular destination. A recent trip to the Cook Islands for Beat of Hawaii felt to him like stepping back into an earlier Hawaii.
Beat of Hawaii increasingly became the purpose behind travel for both Jeff and Rob. Most of their trips now have a Beat of Hawaii connection, whether they’re flying a mainland/Hawaii route, visiting another island or returning to the South Pacific. But sometimes the reporting takes them much farther. They traveled to Madeira to see for themselves whether it really is the “Hawaii of Europe”, and to Barcelona to experience a city at the center of the global debate over overtourism. The same curiosity drives their reporting at home: finding something that deserves a closer look, investigating it, and deciding together whether Beat of Hawaii can bring something unique to the story that readers simply won’t find elsewhere.
Jeff is also a serious photographer, partly by interest and partly by necessity after years of producing a publication that needs a constant supply of fresh Hawaii images. Beat of Hawaii tries to use its own photography whenever possible, and original photos now account for more than 90 percent of the images published on the site. Jeff handles much of that photography as well as BOH’s Adobe photo-editing work. Nearly two decades after Rob first came up with the idea for Beat of Hawaii and Jeff quickly glommed onto it, the early division between Rob’s writing and marketing background and Jeff’s technology skills has largely disappeared. What remains is a collaborative publication built around the places they live in, return to, investigate and continue to be curious about.