As a writer, producer, journalist, and communications strategist, Steve Okino brings a depth of achievement and experience to his speciality of issues-focused information and advocacy filmmaking and campaigns.
His extensive writing and production credits include documentary, corporate/industrial, and political programming. This focus evolves from his journalism background, which includes more than twelve years with CBS News and CBS television stations as a producer and news manager, and as a print and radio reporter. He also has served as a communications strategist and consultant, speechwriter, and creative director in non-profit, government, agency, and corporate settings.
His current projects include Holding Fast the Dream: Hawai‘i’s African American Experience, a film exploring two centuries of achievement and struggle by African Americans in the islands. Recently, he was a writer on Lahaina: Waves of Change, the latest documentary by Hawai‘i icons Eddie and Myrna Kamae. He also co-produced and wrote Ma Ka Malu Ali‘i for PBS Hawai‘i in 2006. And he was the primary writer for a one-hour local television special commemorating the Centennial anniversary of Kapi‘olani Medical Center for Women and Children in the summer of 2009.
Steve’s first independently produced and directed film was A Most Unlikely Hero, which documented the landmark racial discrimination case of Marine Corps Captain Bruce Yamashita. The film was broadcast on PBS stations nationally through American Public Television. It was exhibited at dozens of venues across the country, from the Smithsonian Institution to Stanford University, the New York University Cantor Film Center, to meeting halls, churches, and schools.
Currently, Steve serves in a part-time capacity as Director of Technology for Unity Church of Hawai‘i. He produces and directs Unity’s Sunday live webcasts, produces video material and podcasts, develops and maintains Unity’s website, provides technical support for the church’s computers and network, and sweeps the floor of the control room on a periodic basis.
Steve earned his bachelors degree from the University of Cincinnati, and a masters degree from Northwestern University where he was an NBC graduate fellow; he also completed the CORO Foundation fellowship in public affairs.