“Having folks come together to have honest conversations, with the intent of collaborating towards a real solution and really looking at the problem for what it is. In the long term, we can set up a system that is sustainable for the folks who are from here- Hawaiians in particular.”
Matthew Prellberg joined Holomua Collaborative because it reaches the middle class, “and coming from a working family, I want to use my skill sets in ways that can advocate for others.”
Advocating for others is something he’s been doing for most of his life, sparked by a formative experience when he was ten-years-old. “I was watching Nick News [Nickelodeon’s news magazine for teens and tweens] and saw a story about puppy mills and how unsafe they are for the animals. I was livid,” he recalls.
He asked his parents how to get puppy mills shut down, and they taught him, “If there’s something you see in the world that you don’t like, you need try and change it.” In this case, they suggested he use his voice and ask a politician to change the laws.
In what would later emerge as a pattern of bold and visionary thinking, Prellberg went right to the top: the White House. The Office of President Bill Clinton wrote back to thank Prellberg and direct him to his local government. “If you want to help your neighbors, you need to address your laws at a state and county level,” it read. “That letter and that idea just stuck with me.”
Trained as an attorney, Prellberg has spent most of his career working for the government. The bulk of that experience has been at Hawai‘i’s State Capitol, most recently as Director of Communications for the State Senate. He worked his way to that role via a number of other positions starting in 2008.
Outside of work, Prellberg chooses to volunteer in public service organizations as well, like the Oʻahu Metropolitan Planning Commission Citizen Advisory Committee, the 2020 Victory Campaign National Voter Assistance Hotline, and the McCully – Mō‘ili‘ili Neighborhood Board.
The whole of his public experience has given him “incredible perspective, opportunity and a sense of purpose,” but he says it’s time to broaden the point of view and see how he can serve others from a nonprofit.
He knows the working class well. His mother had a service worker background; his father, a carpentry career, before they left those fields to open OverTime Sports Bar and Grill together in Colorado Springs, where Prellberg is from. It became the family business, with Prellberg taking his first job there as a dishwasher when he was 14-years-old.
Profit margins were tight, and in 2008, the family lost their home to the subprime mortgage crisis. By then, Prellberg was in college, but this meant he had to work three jobs to pay his tuition at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. “I know the value of hard work,” he asserts.
After law school in San Diego, he and his partner moved to back Hawai‘i in 2014, because his Native Hawaiian husband hails from Kailua-Kona and wanted to return home. They rented an apartment for their first decade, but had to move out in the summer of 2024. House-hunting made them realize how inflated Hawai‘i’s housing prices had become, and how slim the affordable inventory is.
“The market has gone up that much in a decade, but wages haven’t,” he says.” The housing market is unsustainable and there is no silver bullet for it.”
Prellberg hopes to effect change now by “having folks come together to have honest conversations, with the intent of collaborating towards a real solution and really looking at the problem for what it is. In the long term, we can set up a system that is sustainable for the folks who are from here- Hawaiians in particular.”
Much like the civic engagement system that forms the core of his resume, his dream is to evolve those conversations into action for the betterment of all.
