At annual gala, Polynesian leaders light the way for youth

LEHI — High achieving people of Polynesian descent will be front and center Thursday and Friday, March 13 and 14, at the University of Utah's Rice-Eccles Stadium for the Utah-based PolyStrong Leadership Foundation's annual summit and gala.

Film director David Derrick ("Moana 2") will be there, as will Col. Stanley Ulualofaiga Snow, the U.S. Navy's first Samoan fighter pilot; and leadership coach Sui Lang L. Panoke, as well as Utah Valley University vice president Kyle Reyes — all setting the stage for this year's PolyStrong lifetime achievement award honoree: swimming and surfing champion Duke Kahanamoku, whose legend has only grown since his death in 1968.

The director of the Duke Kahanamoku Foundation will fly in from Hawaii to receive the award, along with several of the Olympic champion's Hawaiian relatives. Also front and center will be Isaac Halasima, the Tongan film director whose 2021 documentary about Kahanamoku's life, "Waterman," was nominated for an Emmy.

By the time the praising of all these Pacific Islander trailblazers is finished — and the stage is turned over to the Grammy-nominated Polynesian band The Jets to kick off the luau — it will appear that the sky is the limit for anyone with Polynesian heritage.

And that, says Frank Tusieseina, is why they hold these galas every year.

"We want our young people to know that they can be anything they want to be," he says, "and the only way to do that is if they see what others are doing and accomplishing, people who look just like them. If we can get our young Polynesian people to get a vision that the world is truly their oyster it can change their mindset. They begin to realize, hey, I could be a programmer, I could be an attorney, I could be an engineer, I could be a CEO. And once that light comes on, we can give them the tools to get there, which starts with education."

He continues, "The bottom line is that as Polynesians we're known for just a couple of things: sports and entertainment. But there is so much more out there. The main reason PolyStrong exists is because we want to see our young people become leaders in every industry they could possibly dream of, and that there are no limitations."

As you might have guessed, Tusieseina's personal story goes a long way in explaining why he founded the nonprofit PolyStrong Leadership Foundation eight years ago.

The ninth of 11 children, Tusieseina was born in Laie, Hawaii, to Samoan parents and moved to the mainland 62 years ago when he was 3 years old. His father found work as a machinist and in security. His mother stayed home and raised 11 kids. The family lived in San Pedro, California, "in what would be considered the projects."

Everything Tusieseina did he did the hard way. He had no nest egg to get him started. No one mentored him as to the value of education. He attended a junior college only briefly before dropping out. His salvation was that he was good at dreaming and imagining. "I was a serial entrepreneur," he says. He made his own breaks. He became a sports agent, among other things, he helped develop a software program for Karaoke, he managed a record company.

The relationships and connections he made along the way led to success in the real estate development business, culminated by the establishment of his company, the Eastward Management Group, that he founded in 2010.

At 65, he can look back with both pride and wonder at where he is now compared to where he came from.

He can also see that many of the Polynesian friends he grew up with weren't able to fulfill the dreams of their immigrant parents and grandparents, who came to these shores in the hope that their children could enjoy a quality of life beyond theirs.

"They couldn't see a different path," says Frank, who cites a statistic on the PolyStrong website that notes that Pacific Islanders "remain underrepresented in higher-paying corporate, STEM and executive leadership roles."

This weekend, when the fighter pilot and the college vice president and the filmmaker and the leadership coach and all the other honorees of the PolyStrong gala talk to hundreds of Polynesian schoolkids who will be bused to the U. of U. campus from around the state, they will speak to them of a different path.

"That's where the magic is," says Tusieseina. "To watch these kids look at people just like them and see the light go on — anything is possible. Seeing is believing. That's why we do this. That's what makes this all worthwhile."

For more information on the gala and ways to contribute and be involved, go to polystrong.org.

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