Young Terry (center) with sisters Mandy (left) and Judy (right)
Terry (left) with his grandmother Suga (center) and sister Mandy (right)
Terry (right) and his father (left) on a visit to China
Terry and his parents
Terry and his father on a visit to Manzanar
Terry with pups Riley and Monchito at Venice beach car show
Terry w/fellow honorees & trustee Nancy Greenstein after receiving Manager of the Year award
Terry and Diana
Terry enjoying one of his favorite pastimes
Most days Terry Kamibayashi comes to work in a white T-shirt and jeans. There’s a suit and tie somewhere in his closet—he’ll put them on when the occasion demands. But SMC’s director of facilities maintenance prefers to keep it simple.
“I’m a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy,” Terry says. “Then again, my boss wears shorts,” he adds, affectionately referring to Chris Bonvenuto, SMC’s vice president for business and administration.
Unpretentious authenticity defines Terry’s 45-year journey from carpenter and homebuilder to a leader in Santa Monica College’s buildings and operations management.
Rise and Shine
Terry needs no alarm clock. His day starts at 4:30 in the morning. “My body just wakes me up,” says this energetic 63-year-old, who walks 3 miles a day, swims four or five times a week, and kayaks on weekends. “Sleeping in” on Sunday, for Terry, means getting up at 5:30 am.
Terry constructed his career the old-fashioned way: one skill, one project, one deadline at a time.
Other than a single welding course at SMC in the early ’80s, he learned what he needed to know in shop classes at Santa Monica High. “I don’t have any degrees. I’m a high school graduate,” he proudly states.
Yet Terry is knowledgeable about a great many things. He holds certificates in forklift operation and storm water management. He’s trained as a first responder and knows how to deal with active shooter situations. He’s swung the hammer, read the blueprints, dealt with inspectors.
He knows that respect doesn’t automatically come with a title. It has to be earned. “I represent the staff,” he says. “I walked the walk. I know their story. It helps me to fight for them, to know what’s important to them.”
Wrenches, Not Ranches
Dogtown is baked into Terry’s identity.
“A sansei” (third-generation Japanese American), he was born and raised in Santa Monica. In the 1930s, Terry’s immigrant grandfather had farmed 5 acres of celery fields in Venice. Hanbei Kamibayashi lost the farm when his family was hauled off to an internment camp during the war years.
Terry’s other grandfather, Otohiko Kudo, was a rancher in San Diego. But as boy, Terry was more interested in wrenches than ranches.
“My dad had a garage full of tools,” he recalls. A machinist in the aerospace industry, Noboru Kamibayashi used drafting skills learned at SMC to rise from the shop floor to management.
Everyone in the Kamibayashi family has close ties to public education. Terry’s sister Judy Louff was an administrative assistant in SMC’s Theater Arts Department for more than 40 years. His sister, Mandy Price, is a retired schoolteacher who taught second-grade in Northridge. Terry’s mother, Lily Kamibayashi, worked in SMC’s Athletics Department in the late 1970s. She later moved to the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, where her 30-year career overlapped with Terry’s schooling. Lily was a playground supervisor when Terry was a student at Edison Elementary; a teacher’s aide when he got to John Adams Middle School; and a secretary in the administration office when he was at Samohi.
“The year mom retired—1997—was the year I got hired at SMMUSD,” says Terry, whose own career with the school district lasted nearly 20 years.
SMMUSD is where Terry met his wife, Diana (Moreno) Kamibayashi. A former administrative assistant to the superintendent, she ended a 33-year career with the school system with her retirement in 2021.
Carpenter’s Bag of Tricks
Terry never planned for a career in school or college administration. He put a dozen years into the residential homebuilding industry, starting as a wood framer and climbing to supervisor overseeing 30-man crews at Behr Construction.
“I built so many houses in Santa Monica, Malibu and in the Marina,” he says. “Sometimes we go back to look at them. I tell Diana, ‘I built that from the concrete up.’”
Terry’s early construction career was whimsically peppered with entertainment-related jobs. At 18, he was a shop assistant with Disney Studios in Burbank. He helped the Magic Kingdom’s craftsmen construct floating multi-media barges for Epcot Center’s lagoon in the run-up to the Orlando theme park’s 1982 grand opening. Terry was part of the experimental design team launching prototypes on Castaic Lake, 45 miles north of downtown LA. It was also Terry who affixed the reflecting plastic florets, called light shields, on thousands of bulbs used in Disneyland’s Light Parade.
He was a roadie with the punk-rock band Suicidal Tendencies during its US-Canada tour in the late ’80s. Another career detour saw Terry building stages for Cirque Berzerk’s tumblers, fire jugglers and aerialists at Burning Man.
Then in 1994, Terry had to step away from hands-on construction for health reasons. He’d developed avascular necrosis, a disease restricting blood supply in his femurs. After a total hip replacement, ladder-climbing and heavy-lifting on construction sites was out. So Terry went back to carpentry, finding a journey-level opening at SMMUSD. As time passed, he was promoted to facilities technician, then to manager of maintenance and construction. That position had him overseeing everything from emergency repairs to hazardous materials removal across a 20-site school system.
Eager to grow his portfolio, in 2016 Terry grabbed an opportunity to be director of M&O at Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District.
The M (“maintenance”) part Terry knew thoroughly. But the O (“operations”) part was new terrain. It required a big-picture grasp of a complex organization. Not just repairs and upkeep, but the daily workings of IT infrastructure, utilities contracts, transportation services, campus security and much more.
At PVPUSD, Terry found himself wearing many new hats. He led water mitigation efforts. He implemented a hillside clearance fire-prevention plan employing a herd of 500 goats. He got certified as a playground safety inspector, and managed a fleet of 25 vans and trailers needing timely smog checks and tune-ups.
Corsairs’ Fixer
After four years, however, the hour-long commute to Palos Verdes was wearing thin. Terry missed the days of biking 2 miles to work, and he needed to devote more time to his aging parents, now in their mid-90s and living with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
In 2020, Terry left his M&O directorship at PVPUSD, taking a pay cut and drop in rank to join SMC as assistant director of facilities maintenance.
Looking back, he says, “it was the right decision. I wanted the last stretch of my career to be in Santa Monica.”
Terry’s first day at SMC was March 3, 2020. Ten days later, the pandemic brought campus life to a halt. With his 25-person crew on stay-at-home orders, Terry found himself running a ghost town. He used the lockdown period to take stock of all existing SMC facilities and systems, recalibrating them to the new realities of remote learning, virus spread prevention and social distancing. He was soon promoted to the facilities directorship, and for the past year, he’s been running operations too.
In August 2025, the SMC Management Association recognized Terry’s stepping up to shoulder the full M&O portfolio in the wake of a workplace violence tragedy that impacted the department—and supervision of its 100 employees—when it presented to him the “Manager of the Year” award at Professional Development Day.
Kayaking, Fishing and Easy Skanking
Starting his work day at 4:30 am gives Terry late afternoons to pursue other interests. And he has many.
He enjoys cooking, especially fresh-caught fish from the High Sierras. A lifelong angler, Terry prepares his catch-of-the-day in the smoker, on the grill, or in a frying pan. “I love, love trout! Fishing was part of my growing up,” he says.
So was snowboarding at Mammoth and rock climbing in Yosemite and Joshua Tree, until his hips gave out.
A second hip replacement in July has restored some of Terry’s former athleticism. “In the last five months, I lost over 30 pounds,” he says. “I’m not yet back to snowboarding, but I am kayaking. I ride my bike, and take long walks.”
He and Diana have no children, but they share two adorable Chihuahua-mix rescues. Riley and Monchito accompany them on those walks in their “North of Rose” neighborhood of Venice.
“We love to listen to live music,” Terry adds. After hours, they’ll hit a nightclub. In the summer, they head for the Hollywood Bowl.
They share a special passion for reggae music. Terry started attending Sunsplash back when Roger Steffens, co-host of KCRW’s popular Reggae Beat, led trips to the world-famous music festival in Jamaica. As a couple, they’ve sailed ten times from Miami to Jamaica on the JamRock Reggae Cruise, a six-day reggae festival at sea. “We’ve met lifelong friends from going every year,” Terry says. Organized by Bob Marley’s sons, the annual cruise spotlights reggae talent from across the island. Diana and Terry have already booked their cabin for November’s voyage.
From the woodshop to the ship’s deck to the executive suite, there’s a through-line in Terry’s life. Steady, hands-on work. A can-do spirit. No swagger. Just showing up every day—at 4:30 am in a white T-shirt and jeans—ready to solve problems and have a good time doing it.
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SMC in Focus Volume XII, Issue 1
Hope for the Unhoused
An assignment in SMC’s Homeless Service Work certificate program led Patricia Kusaba to launch an online toolkit to help people in need. Read Article
Frontline Responder
From award-winning journalist to first point of contact at the SMC Police Department, Erin O’Neill brings empathy and creativity to a vital role. Read Article
Woodshop Until He Drops
Meet Terry Kamibayashi, Santa Monica College’s reggae-loving, easy-going director of facilities maintenance. Read Article
Solo & Ensemble
SMC redefines the library experience to support both personal study and group collaboration. With a $1 million renovation, the award-winning 96,000 sq.ft. space has been reimagined. Read Article
Bragging Rights
The Architecture program recognized as an Exemplary Program. A counseling instructor appointed to statewide FACCC Board of Governors. A sociology prof interviewed on a popular Apple crime podcast. Read Article
#2016 Era SMC in Focus: A Look Back
SMC in Focus does a #2016Era throwback. Ten stories—Nursing’s 50-year anniversary, Emeritus, Promo Pathway, SMC students at NASA/JPL, & more—celebrate SMC’s excellence: past, present & future. Read Article