Everyday Heroes

Congratulations to our 2024 Everyday Heroes honoree, Sea Potential.

Sea Potential cultivates a full cycle of Black Indigenous People of Color representation in maritime. Through healing activities and ocean justice conversations, they focus on fostering youth appreciation and connection to marine ecosystems, in addition to transforming the maritime industry with inclusive workplace culture. Sea Potential envisions a world that promotes representation over assimilation, reciprocal healing and relationships where everyone is seen, heard, and valued.

Sea Potential’s efforts to inspire and empower BIPOC youth, along with their commitment to creating positive change in the community, represent the essence of the Everyday Hero Award.

Facing Homelessness: The BLOCK Project
Facing Homelessness believes that we can and will end homelessness when we inspire and engage community members to be a part of the solution. We established a variety of programs, partnerships, and services that invite all of us to come closer, and to contribute our unique passions and skills toward the effort of ending homelessness.

Alimentando al Pueblo
The only Latinx food bank in the country, Alimentando al Pueblo shares music, community and joy along with culturally relevant food.

JM Wong
JM Wong has been a long-time advocate, and change-maker. They are dedicated to liberation movements , particularly in creating cultures of learning, compassion, and healing within Seattle’s Asian American community. Through their work with the Massage Parlor Outreach Project, JM has created spaces for cross-community care and international solidarity.

Katherine Kehrli – Community Loaves
Community Loaves started when Katherine Kehrli wanted to bake bread for her local food bank. It then expanded to an all-volunteer network of over 500 bakers, flour packers, drivers, and baker mentors. In 2020, they delivered over 8000 loaves of bread to local food pantries.

Rita Zawaideh – Salaam Cultural Museum
Rita Zawaideh founded the Salaam Cultural Museum (SCM) to raise awareness of Arab American cultures and provide support to refugees and immigrants, both locally and internationally. She is a one-person community information center for the Arab community. Zawaideh has used her travel agency network to organize volunteer trips and donation drives for refugees in the Middle East and North Africa since the 1980s.

Feed the People with Seattle Community Kitchen Collective
These chefs organized themselves very early on in the COVID-19 pandemic to provide free meals to all people in need of a hot meal. They combined resources to prepare hundreds of meals nearly every day.

Seattle Community Kitchen Collective consists of:

• Damon Bomar and Chef Kristi Brown of That Brown Girl Cooks and Communion
• Chef Tarik Abdullah, founder Feed the People
• Melissa Miranda of Musang
• Chera Amlag of Hood Famous Bakeshop
• Cam Hanin of Guerrilla Pizza Kitchen
• Guitar Srisuthiamorn of Sugar Hill

UW Medicine COVID-19 Equity Champions
Dr. Lisa Chew, Martine Pierre-Louis, and Paula Houston rose to the challenge of suppressing the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak with inventive, real-time solutions. They realized that serving everyone required a fully concerted effort between medical personnel and community outreach.

Omari Salisbury and Converge Media
As co-founder of Converge Media, a multifaceted production platform created to uplift Black media, Omari Salisbury is fully committed, driven, and open with his opinions. His passion is evident in his long-standing coverage of Seattle’s Central District and reporting on Black Lives Matter, the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) following George Floyd’s murder, and more.