Hawaii-born and raised, Randy Wong is a distinctive voice within the arts administration and musical communities. As President & CEO of Hawaiʻi Youth Symphony, Randy has advanced its vision of a Hawaiʻi where Music Is A Right, breaking down systemic financial and geographic barriers to access. Randy was invited by the Obama Foundation to its 26/27 Obama Leaders USA cohort, and is one of 50 change-makers nationwide and 155 throughout the globe.
Over a fourteen-plus year career at HYS (and hopefully many more), he has forged partnerships with the Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestra, Boys & Girls Clubs, and National Orchestral Institute+Festival. Prior to HYS, Randy was Program Director & Information Architect for the Music-in-Education National Consortium and was on the college faculty of New England Conservatory.
Randy holds an Ed. M from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (Arts in Education) and a B.M. (Performance) from New England Conservatory. A bassist in the Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestra and an arranger, Randy has recorded/produced albums in jazz, popular, Hawaiian, and Exotica genres and has been profiled on NPR. In 2026, he joined The Recording Academy as a Voting Member.
He was a member of the League’s Emerging Leaders Program 2017, Stanford Graduate School of Business’ Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders, American Express/Center for Creative Leadership’s Leadership Academy, and Associate Editor of the Journal for Music-in-Education.
Randy was honored by the Hawai‘i Community Foundation in 2018 with its Ho‘okele Award for Excellence in Nonprofit Leadership, joining a small cohort of other executive director awardees since the award’s creation in 2002. He also received an Award of Excellence for Executive Non-Profit Leadership from Business Leadership Hawaii/Pacific Business News in 2021. Through his leadership, Hawaii Youth Symphony has won awards for nonprofit marketing, communications, public relations campaigns, and more.
In his free time, Randy volunteers for the League of American Orchestras’ Youth Orchestra Division as its Vice Chair and mentor for its Student Leadership Cohort. His previous volunteering included Hawaiʻi Public Radio as co-chair of its Generation Listen initiative, and as a mentor for first-gen college students from ‘A’ali’i Mentoring/Big Brothers Big Sisters, high school students of the Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders (Hawaiʻi), and graduate students from Harvard University and New England Conservatory.
