Valorie McVay was born in 1969, the youngest member of a large African/Irish-American family in Hanapēpe, Hawaii. Feeling ignored and unhappy, at 18 she grabbed the first job she could find – as an operator for GTE telecommunications. Discovering a flair for both management and technology, she rose through the ranks quickly and helped spearhead a program to introduce the nation's first rural service area, providing cellular service on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.