President of Parents and Children Together serves families with challenges

Ryan Kusumoto, like many in the social services sector, followed a circuitous path to that career, ultimately to his post as president and CEO of Parents and Children Together.

Kusumoto, 41, graduated from Iolani School and then the University of Hawaii with a zoology degree and a goal of medical school. Then a research project fueled an interest in hospital administration. He partnered with a work colleague at Hawaii Pacific Health to open a business, the arcade center Planet Fun.

There the business hosted weekday events for clients at Goodwill Industries — which became his next employer about eight years ago. Finally, in 2014, the retirement of longtime CEO Ruthann Quitiquit drew his attention to PACT.

The nearly half-century-old nonprofit serves the social-service needs of about 18,000 low-income families.

PACT, which was born at Kuhio Park Terrace — where it’s still headquartered — has community-based operations throughout the islands. The organization likes being part of the neighborhood it serves, Kusumoto said, adding that he couldn’t imagine his office being anyplace other than KPT.

The organization also keeps a high profile in the wider community, sponsoring a downtown rally a few weeks ago to raise awareness of National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

And on May 3, its annual “Keiki Day” fundraiser will dispatch community leaders statewide to collect donations and distribute commemorative editions of the local newspaper, including the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Oahu.

Off duty, Kusumoto invests his attention in his wife and their daughters, 14 and 11. And although he has no time to dance, he maintains his love for hula as a former member of the Iolani troupe, Halau O Na Pua Kukui.

In all, the circuitous path has led to a good place, he said.

“I was fortunate to have these experiences, these mentors to get me to a place where I wanted to be, where I could impact the community, and continue the good work that has been done here at PACT,” Kusumoto said.

QUESTION: How did your work at Goodwill prepare you for this role?

ANSWER: Goodwill is a large organization from a nonprofit standpoint, a large nonprofit. … The other thing is that it was very diverse in the different things they did, from working with the developmentally disabled, to job-training placement, to helping people with individual disabilities find jobs. …

So it was a very diverse set of lines of business in the nonprofit world Goodwill had, and I would say the same for PACT, and maybe even more so. Our mission here at PACT is very broad as well.

We have early-education programs, we do domestic violence programs, child abuse prevention/intervention programs, behavioral health programs and some community-building programs. It doesn’t fall under a nice little umbrella with one thing that we do. …

We’re really looking at the various needs within the community for a family, and figuring out how can we help them, in whatever realm that might be. …

Q: Do you find among your adult clients dealing with child abuse that they had been abused themselves?

A: We find quite a bit of folks who are part of that circle, the continuous circle of trauma and abuse, and it perpetuates somehow through their past experiences. In a lot of our programs, we work to unravel and unpackage that trauma, and seek other ways to deal with those matters, rather than continuing that abuse and neglect, or whatever that might be.

Q: How do you teach new coping skills?

A: I wish I could tell you that we have a cookie cutter of some sort. I wish I could, but I’m also glad I’m not able to.

When I came to PACT, one of the things that attracted me to this organization, this mission, was the way they delivered service… . We work individually with each client who comes to us. We learn from them. And we figure out ways together to achieve whatever it is that they need to get.

We have our social workers in place. We have our modules. We have our curriculum that we utilize for all these things. We take all that specialty, the education, all the things that we have at our fingertips, our toolkit, but we really work with those families individually. They come to us at different points in their lives, and different situations. …

Our staff, I call them heroes. They really work with our clients one-on-one and try to identify, together, how to get to that desired outcome, whatever that might be.

We kind of call that our “special sauce” here at PACT, but it’s really something that’s intentional. …

Q: Over the nearly half-century since PACT was founded, how would you say its mission has changed? Has homelessness become part of the mission?

A: A couple things on homelessness. Our organization would say we’ve been working with a branch of individuals who are homeless for a very long time. That’s in domestic violence, our shelters that we have. Individuals who are dealing with that need emergency shelter, long-term shelter, and we provide that …

But in the more traditional definition of homelessness our state is dealing with right now, we are starting to respond. We’re working on some partnerships with some of the other agencies out there, like the Institute for Human Services, to provide services to families dealing with this.

There are some folks down in the Iwilei-Aala Park area for whom we’re looking to do some housing navigation and provide services to families with young children. …

We’re kind of being a little cagey on this because we’re in the process of setting that up, but we’re working on a project we’re calling “Preschool in the Park,” where we’re reaching out to families with young children.

The gap that we found is, a lot of them are afraid to look for housing, because they’re worried that maybe the kids will be taken away from them.

So they’re not looking for services. And at the same time they’re struggling every day, just to find shelter or food. They’re not even thinking about the development of their children. So we want to bring some of those services to them in the park. …

Q: Your plans for sex-trafficking intervention: Is Hawaii at the center of that?

A: I wouldn’t say we are. But we feel there’s a need to respond. We have some very dedicated and very passionate staff who felt they could use their skills to respond to that. … I would say it’s significant.

Q: Are there any legislative measures you’re following?

A: In the domestic violence world, there’s always a number of bills that go through about how we provide more protection for survivors. There’s one in particular this year, which is Marsy’s Law. That’s going through as a constitutional amendment.

But the gist of it is to provide more rights to the victims/survivors. Oftentimes the batterer or the perpetrator has more rights than the survivor.

This law provides more protection, more notification and just in general more rights. …

The bills that aren’t alive are the ones for after-school programs. It’s particularly relevant most recently because of the stabbing that happened here last week, at KPT. There’s just so much more work we need to do in that area. …

Q: You deal with such hard issues here. Does it seem like a heavy burden?

A: First of all, we go back and we say, “It is what it is, but it’s also our responsibility and our obligation when you sit in this chair, any chair in this organization, it’s an obligation for us to serve this community as best we can.”

So we kind of take that upon our shoulders to say, “It’s not just a job” …

Now, that’s a lot. That’s putting a lot of pressure. Our staff, when we were at that sign-waving event, they were out there, cheering on the community, trying to get people to honk their horns.

And you look at them, and you wouldn’t guess that, on a daily basis, they’re seeing probably the worst situations in people’s lives. …

They’re dealing with a child who has been abused. They’re dealing with a woman who’s being battered by her significant other. And it is hard. …

And that’s a challenge for anyone in the nonprofit setting — to make sure you create time and space to reflect on the work that we do, No. 1.

And then to give time and space to allow individuals, our staff, to really have that self-care, whatever that might be, to continue that work. …

Q: There have got to be the happy cases, the clients who have been able to move on?

A: I think that’s what drives our guys, that they know that it’s about that individual who they helped move from a violent situation. Or that young child who just says, “Thank you,” at the end of the day.

Or it could be 10 years later, when someone says, “You know, you helped me, and I remember that.”

It’s those kinds of things that I think are very helpful. It reminds us why we do what we do.

Q: What are some of the things that interest you outside work?

A: About 10 years ago, I was active in hula…

I think that has really helped me in the role that I have here today. … Being really respectful of this place that we live in and the cultures that people have, and not taking that for granted.

When we deliver service in our community to our clients, We can’t just say, “We’re going to do this for you because we think it’s right.”

We want to understand where that individual is coming from, understand their culture, what is important for them, and say, ‘Let’s work together on that.”