East-West Center President Suzanne Vares-Lum, who is both the first Native Hawaiian and the first woman to lead the organization, will leave her position at the end of this year to head the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, located in Waikiki.

“It is with a heavy heart that I will be moving on from the East-West Center, whose amazing staff and community have made my time here some of the most professionally and personally rewarding of my life,” Vares- Lum wrote Monday morning in a message to EWC staff. “Making the decision to depart this great institution was very difficult, but ultimately I believe this new appointment is the best opportunity for me to draw on my cumulative experiences toward making a positive impact on our region.”

In a news release, the EWC said former Board of Governors Chair Jim Scott, former president of Punahou School, will serve as the center’s interim president while the board searches for a permanent successor, a process that is expected to take about six months.

Gov. Josh Green, who serves as a member of the East-West Center’s board and is responsible for appointing five of its other members, said in a statement, “Suzy’s remarkable tenure as the first woman and first Native Hawaiian President of the East-West Center has been a reflection of her inspiring vision, energy, and aloha. Thanks to her leadership, the Center has enjoyed an upwelling of support in recent years, and she leaves it well-positioned as a stronger, more vital institution.”

Born out of a University of Hawaii at Manoa faculty initiative in 1959, the East-West Center was formally established by Congress in 1960 to strengthen American academic, cultural and political ties with nations throughout Asia and Pacific through exchanges and research. It remains at the campus to this day.

APCSS is an institute run by the Department of Defense that officially opened Sept. 4, 1995. It hosts seminars, workshops and research projects with an aim at building relationships between military, diplomatic and other professionals from around the globe. Its creation was pushed by the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye after he visited the similar George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany and wanted a similar center focused on Pacific issues.

Before taking the helm of EWC, Vares-Lum served in the Army for 34 years, deploying to Iraq with the Hawaii National Guard as an intelligence officer and ultimately retiring as a major general serving at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command at Camp Smith. She is also an alum of APCSS.

She took over EWC in 2022. In the center’s news release, the organization said she oversaw the EWC’s “recovery from pandemic lockdowns and worked closely with the institution’s board, staff, and stakeholders to implement EWC’s first new formal strategic plan in nearly two decades. Both government and private funding have also increased, and enrollment in EWC’s programs have reached some of the highest levels in several decades.”

Vares-Lum, who is currently in Australia for a conference, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in a phone interview, “The (EWC) board certainly wanted me to stay on, but this opportunity came up that is just really in line with everything I’ve done.”

But she said that while she is leaving EWC, she expects to continue to work closely with the center in her new role.

“I think there’s so much synergy between the East-West Center and APCSS,” she said. “Its ultimate purpose and vision is to create a peaceful, prosperous Indo-Pacific region through people-to-people connections, through education, through empowerment. It’s just your audience is a little different, and topics of which you cover may have more of a security focus, which is really in what I’ve been doing for 34 years,” she said.

Dan Leaf, a retired Air Force general and former director of APCSS, praised the selection of Vares-Lum to lead the organization.

“She’s the not just the right person, she’s the best person,” Leaf said. “I look forward to seeing all the advancements the center makes under her leadership. She is experienced in both worlds (of defense and diplomacy) with her military background and her leadership of the East-West Center. She is strong and collegial and charismatic, all things that matter as the center director.”

Vares-Lum also will be the first Native Hawaiian to lead APCSS. She is expected to leave EWC at the end of December and take over APCSS in January.