Joseph Pfeifer, the retired New York City Fire Department chief who was the first FDNY commander on scene at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, will deliver the keynote address at the 2026 Hawaiʻi Tourism Conference on Sept. 24 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikīkī Beach Resort on Oʻahu. Pfeifer plans to open the conference by recounting the journey that brought him and his family to Hawaiʻi later in 2001, at the state's invitation, and how that visit became part of his healing and remained significant to his family in the years since.
The keynote is built around a line Pfeifer wrote in his book, “Ordinary Heroes, A Memoir of 9/11”: “Wherever we went, Hawaiʻi took care of us,” according to Big Island Now. Caroline Anderson, who has served as the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority's interim president and CEO since March 2025 following Daniel Nāhoʻopiʻi's departure to join JLL's Global Tourism & Destination Advisory Group, said in an agency release that Pfeifer's story demonstrates that the care experienced in Hawaiʻi can remain with visitors long after they return home, per eTurboNews. Anderson also said the keynote connects Pfeifer's personal story to an opportunity for the visitor industry to learn from an emergency leader, the outlet's report notes.
A 39-Year Career Spanning 9/11, the Hudson Landing and Sandy
Pfeifer's career with the FDNY spanned 39 years, during which he commanded responses to the Sept. 11 attacks, the “Miracle on the Hudson” water landing and Superstorm Sandy, along with numerous other major New York City fires and emergencies. He went on to serve as acting fire commissioner through 2024 and returned in 2023 as first deputy commissioner, a role in which he oversaw roughly 17,000 firefighters, EMS personnel and administrative employees along with a multibillion-dollar departmental budget, according to the Big Island Now report.
His brother, FDNY Lt. Kevin Pfeifer of Engine 33, entered the North Tower stairwell on Sept. 11, 2001, to direct trapped firefighters toward safety before dying when the building collapsed, according to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. In all, 343 members of the FDNY were killed during rescue operations at the World Trade Center that day, per NYC Tourism. In 2004, Pfeifer founded and directed the FDNY's Center for Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness, an institution built to pioneer interagency intelligence sharing and tactical disaster-response protocols, before retiring from that role as an assistant chief in 2018, according to records from FDNY Hazardous Materials Company #1.
From the Fire Service to the Lecture Hall
Since leaving the department, Pfeifer has become a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and he serves as an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He has also addressed the United Nations and testified before the U.S. Congress, per the Big Island Now account. At the Hawaiʻi conference, he is expected to share lessons in emergency response, preparedness and leadership drawn from that career.
This year's gathering carries the theme “Ke Kahu o ka Mālamalama — Guardians of the Light: Honoring Our Stories, Advancing Knowledge, Inspiring a Path Forward,” and is projected to draw more than 600 hospitality professionals, natural-resource stewards, government officials and community leaders, according to Honolulu News. General attendee registration runs $350 plus applicable fees, and the first 500 people to register will receive a free copy of Pfeifer's memoir, the Big Island Now report states.
Tourism's High Stakes for the Islands
The keynote arrives as Hawaiʻi's tourism sector navigates a period of structural change. Tourism remains the state's largest private economic sector, generating more than $17 billion in annual visitor spending and supporting roughly one out of every five jobs statewide, as Hoodline previously reported. In May 2025, Governor Josh Green signed Senate Bill 1571, restructuring the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority's governing board into an advisory role and shifting budget oversight to the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism, after which Green requested courtesy resignations from all board members that July, according to Travelweek.
Those governance changes came alongside HTA's July 2026 release of its 2026–2030 Strategic Plan, a five-year framework emphasizing growth in visitor spending over sheer arrival volume, and its January 2026 launch of the global “Hawaii Stays With You” campaign, which prioritizes transformational travel and cultural stewardship over traditional sightseeing. Both initiatives echo the sentiment at the heart of Pfeifer's keynote: that the care extended to visitors in Hawaiʻi can leave a lasting impression long after they've gone home.
