Meet Kae

I grew up in Kailua and graduated from Kalaheo High School. I earned a bachelor’s degree in business management while I was already a wife and a mom.

I still live on the windward side. My husband and I have a blended family — two sons and two step-daughters. I love to sew and be creative. I want to travel with my family and see the world.

My work started earlier than the licenses. When I was twelve, my dad, HFD Captain Jack Denis, tried to teach me about stocks. I did not understand him. He said that was all right. He was planting seeds.

Those seeds sat quiet for a long time. I started as a teller at Bank of Hawaii when I was eighteen. That was my first real look at money. I worked in debt collection and learned what happens when money goes wrong. I spent a short stretch in a CPA’s office and got a dry first look at taxes. I was an executive assistant to a CEO and watched how businesses are actually run — well, and not well. Then I became a branch office administrator at Edward Jones. I helped clients. I learned investments from the chair beside the advisor.

That is where my father’s seed bloomed. A gentleman used to call every day for stock quotes. Answering those calls, I finally understood what Dad had been talking about. I phoned him and said, “I get it now.” He said, “Great.” Then he told me the next part: to truly understand, you have to invest your own money. The first stock I bought was Yahoo, at twelve dollars a share, during the crash of 2001.

In 2008 I made the leap and became a financial advisor — two months before the market crashed. I had already been through September 11th as an assistant. I had watched quality investments recover. I did not panic. I told clients who held quality investments that it would come back, and that with guidance they would be fine. I have been doing this work ever since.

The financial practice stayed small on purpose. I could not keep a real relationship with three hundred clients. I sit with people myself — coffee, lunch, dinner when we can. If I am on another island, I go see them. If they are farther away, we use Zoom. We catch up on family first. Then we talk about what they need. The Insurance clientele is larger with minimal adjustments needed, Medicare insurance reviews annually.

Tell me what you are looking to accomplish, and we will collaborate on the strategy.

Sometimes the first call is about investments, retirement, tax-free investing, or an estate and beneficiary question. That work lives under Rise Up Financial. Sometimes the first call is protection: life insurance, long-term care, disability, Medicare, or dental. Those conversations live under Insurance. The companies behind the paperwork are not always the same. The person sitting with you is. A financial client becomes a Medicare client. Someone who arrived for Medicare asks me to look at a long-term care policy. The door they use first is not always the only room they need.

I am Series 7, Series 66, life and health licensed. I am licensed in Hawaiʻi, California, and Idaho.

The word I want this page to carry is integrity. Some of my clients have been with me for almost twenty years. I work for them. I worked hard for that trust. They are more than accounts. If I cannot help you, I will find someone who can or point you in the direction you need to go.

Just call her. That is what I hope my clients say when asked who they work with.

When you are ready, choose the door that matches why you came.