Join Chef Marcus Samuelsson as he explores Seattle’s thriving Filipino community, learning about their longstanding connection to the city and meeting young Filipino-American chefs who are bringing their passion to the city’s vibrant food scene.
Join Chef Marcus Samuelsson as he explores Seattle’s thriving Filipino community, learning about their longstanding connection to the city and meeting young Filipino-American chefs who are bringing their passion to the city’s vibrant food scene.
By Liberty Peralta, PBS Hawaiʻi
Inset image, left: Sullivan as a University of Hawai‘i doctoral candidate in Engineering. Genie, right, is an Oceanit robotics and artificial intelligence project with two brains, eyes, ears and a mouth that is capable of tracking faces and specific expressions.
It seems there’s no problem too big or too small for Patrick Sullivan of Kailua, Windward O‘ahu.
He wanted a car, so at age 13, he started working in food service jobs, saved up and bought a car at age 16.
He wanted to go to college, so at age 17, he applied for student loans, grants, and work study … and started a landscaping business to earn the money.
He visited the Islands during a college break, so to pay for his lodging, he cobbled together home improvement jobs for some people he met on the plane ride to O‘ahu.
So it seems natural that Sullivan is now in the business of problem solving. He’s the founder and chairman of Oceanit, a Honolulu-based company that uses science and innovation to create solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges. One of the many projects that Oceanit is working on is a rapid-response solution to help an elderly person after a fall. Sullivan explains that an “inexpensive but effective robotic assistant” can help save a life.
This wall at Oceanit headquarters attracts visitor attention. Inset image: Deep-dive helmets, above, are being redesigned to reduce noise that causes hearing loss while maintaining the ability to communicate.
The name “Oceanit” comes from a Greek and Latin term for “ocean dweller.” It’s an apt description for Sullivan, who gets in the water four to five times a week. It’s a tradition that started when his son Matthew and daughter Tarah were children. “Surfing is a way to reconnect to the world,” he says.
As Sullivan explains it, “Oceanit” is also an apt company name. “The ocean is a teacher in so many ways,” he says. “It covers everything from physics, chemistry, biology, hydromechanics, so [the ocean] is probably the biggest mashup of all science.”
Oceanit employs about 160 scientists and engineers and has raised more than $475 million in research and development funds. Its national and international client list includes governments, universities, organizations and businesses.
It’s no accident that Oceanit is based in Hawai‘i, and Sullivan credits it as a strength. “Innovation comes from differences, not sameness,” he says. “I think in the culture of Hawai‘i is innovation. The Native Hawaiians that came to Hawai‘i, they innovated to get here, and they innovated when they got here. They were not afraid of technology, afraid of change; they embraced it.”
Sullivan is familiar with constant change. Born in California, Sullivan spent his early years in Los Angeles. His family moved to Seattle after his father Thomas was hired as an aircraft mechanic for Boeing, a job that would end during a mass layoff. Sullivan’s family then moved multiple times to Texas, Wyoming and Arizona, before settling down in Colorado.
“I went to four different high schools, which brings its own challenges,” Sullivan says. “[My parents] tried to keep everything together, but it was just really hard.”
His parents, whose families moved West after the Great Depression, lacked the means to pursue an education, and had five children to care for. “That’s why an education was so important [to me],” he says.
With the rapid pace of technology replacing lowerwage service jobs, Sullivan underscores the importance of education.
“Adults need to consider lifelong learning,” he says. “That needs to be part of the culture, where we get comfortable with that, and it needs to be more available and affordable.”
Sullivan stresses that getting an education for the sake of education isn’t the point, but to build one’s “durability” as industries continue to evolve. It’s the kind of durability that’s helped Sullivan navigate change and tackle life’s challenges.
And with the business of problem solving, it seems there’s no end in sight.
Seattle-born artist Nahaan sees tattoo, like many other forms of artistic expression, as a political act and a form of resistance. This artist of mixed First Nations heritage draws on traditional teachings to create new work using modern and traditional methods alike. Born and raised in an urban environment, Nahaan uses the city as a platform for upholding and revivifying cultural practices that colonization once threatened to wipe out. Drawing on the symbology and aesthetics of the Indigenous West Coast, his tattoo work becomes “permanent regalia” on the bodies he works on, expressing through image and symbol the deepest beliefs of his ancestors and the forces that give life to his people and the land.
Dig the modern Americana sounds of The Head and The Heart and Benjamin Booker. Seattle’s folk-rocking THaTH supports its latest acclaimed album Signs of Light, while New Orleans’ Booker rips through the blues, soul and rock of Witness.
Preview: The Head and the Heart
Preview: Benjamin Book
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For questions regarding this press release, contact:
Jody Shiroma
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808.462.5026
May 14, 2019
(HONOLULU, HI) –– Bank of Hawaii Foundation has renewed its major support of PBS Hawaiʻiʻs youth learning initiative: HIKI NŌ: The Nation’s First Statewide Student News Network, with a $100,000 grant. Bank of Hawaii Foundation’s investment dates back to the launch of HIKI NŌ in 2011.
Since then, Hawaii’s HIKI NŌ schools have gained the reputation of being formidable competitors at rigorous national journalism contests, including bringing home nearly 20% of the awards at the prestigious Student Television Network Convention held March 28-31 in Seattle, Washington and which involved over 3,000 students and teachers.
“Bank of Hawaii Foundation is honored to be a significant contributor to HIKI NŌ since inception,” said Momi Akimseu, president of Bank of Hawaii Foundation. “Our ongoing commitment helps local students across the islands continue the meaningful work of sharing their unique voices and perspectives in a very powerful way. We are proud to support a program of this caliber, which provides students the opportunity to develop digital storytelling skills and the means to connect their relevant stories and experience with our local community.”
PBS Hawaiʻi President and CEO Leslie Wilcox said the Foundation’s belief in Hawaiʻi’s youth is fueling a statewide “launch pad” for student achievement in real-world life skills such as perseverance, critical thinking, oral and written communications, teamwork and technology.
Under their teachers’ guidance, middle and high school students from more than 90 public, private and charter schools from across the islands use digital media to report from their communities.
Bank of Hawaii Foundation is HIKI NŌ’s trailblazing lead sponsor, with other major sponsors Kamehameha Schools and ABC Stores.
HIKI NŌ airs on PBS Hawaiʻi at 7:30 pm Thursdays, and is rebroadcast at 3:00 pm on Sundays. The student newscasts are always available to view on demand at www.pbshawaii.org.
The stories in AMERICAN CREED are told from the points of view of unlikely activists who creatively bridge cultural, economic and/or political divides. In his hometown of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, baseball manager Joe Maddon brings new immigrants and long-time residents together after a controversial local election. In Oklahoma, Lindbergh Elementary School Principal Deidre Prevett, a dual citizen of Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the US, fights for the struggling children and transient families of many different ethnicities who pass through her hometown of East Tulsa. Acclaimed novelist Junot Diaz, from urban New Jersey, and Marine Sgt. Tegan Griffith, from rural Wisconsin, work in very different spheres to achieve “the dream of an America where we can be on each other’s side.” Based in Seattle, Eric Liu brings community organizers together across ideological divides. By “being open and listening,” the founders of the grassroots organizations MoveOn.org and the Tea Party Patriots unexpectedly find common ground. In the Arkansas Delta, where mechanization threatens agricultural jobs, entrepreneurs Leila Janah and Terrence Davenport start an innovative technology company based on what they see as America’s promise of equal opportunity
for all.
Explore the Pacific Northwest as Moveable Feast with Fine Cooking travels to Seattle to get a taste of some of the freshest food on the west coast. Host Curtis Stone travels by seaplane to Coupeville with Chef Tom Douglas, winner of three James Beard Awards, and Chef Renee Erickson, a major driving force in the food boom of Seattle. First stop: a visit to Penn Cove to see where mussels grow in the best environment in the region. He then meets Georgie Smith of Willowood Farms, one of the most photographed, painted and otherwise admired farmscapes in the Pacific Northwest. The chefs get together to create a feast that highlights the fresh mussels from Penn Cove and vegetables that benefit from Washington’s rich soil, in recipes such as a delicious spiced mussels and saffron soup followed by grilled salmon with Walla Walla onions and fava leaves.
Seattle discoveries run the gamut, with a circa 1964 “Star Trek” script and pitch letter; a Civil War dog collar; and Harriet Frishmuth bookends valued at $10,000.
Highlights from the Roadshow floor in Seattle include a late-16th-century diamond and enamel jewel; a moose, elk and buffalo hide chair; and a Steiff clown bear worth $2,500-$3,200.
Highlights from the Roadshow floor include a Vladimir Kagan desk used by Kagan himself and an impressive 1874 Francis A. Silva oil painting valued at $250,000.