By Gerardo R. Partido
Variety News Staff

ALFRED C. Ysrael, founder and chairman of Tanota Partners, is the 2006 Executive of the Year.
Ysrael was announced winner at the 24th Annual Guam Business Executive of the Year gala on Saturday at the Hilton Guam Resort & Spa.
This year’s theme, “Dancing with the Stars, Season II,” was hosted by Ray Gibson, morning talk show host at K57.
Ysrael, 76, is the eldest of seven children born and raised in the Philippines to Arab Syrian immigrants. His first job was selling women’s lingerie at Divisoria, an outdoor marketplace in the Philippines.
He and his family survived the Japanese occupation in the Philippines, living one year in the mountains. In May 1951, after graduating from college, he left for the island of Guam as an H-2 worker for Andersen Air Force Base, obtaining a three-year stint as an accountant for the bowling alley on base.
In 1955, he bought six surplus bowling alley lanes from the Navy and built the first civilian bowling establishment on Guam, which soon became a hot recreation spot. Later, he was instrumental in the organization and construction of the Royal Lanes Bowling Alley in Tamuning.
In 1958, Ysrael acquired his U.S. citizenship and two weeks later, was drafted in the U.S. Army to serve two years of military service. He also served on the 12th and 13th Guam Legislature, where he implemented several lifestyle-changing pieces of legislation.
From Royal Lanes Bowling Alley operation and land acquisition, property development was a normal next step and Tanota Partners was born. Ysrael had no formal education related to the construction of big buildings but he said: “I’m just a practical person. You don’t have to be a genius to accomplish things.”
He established the Fujita hotel in 1968, Guam’s first 24-hour lodging, after discovering that Japanese tourists slept on the beach when their planes arrived shortly after midnight, because hotels didn’t open until the morning.
Today, Ysrael is a great figure in the hotel industry. Building upon the success of the Fujita, the Ysrael family helped develop what is now the Hilton Guam Resort & Spa, and built the Sunroute Hotel, the Guam Regency Hotel and the Outrigger Guam Resort.
His wife of 46 years is Diana Zeien and they have five children: Michael, 45; Elizabeth, 44; Mariana, 43; Catherine, 42; and Donna, 39.
The Executive of the Year gala is a major fundraiser for the Guam chapter of the American Red Cross. The first quarter 2007 issue of Guam Business, with Ysrael on the cover, was unveiled on Saturday night.