(upbeat music) - [Announcer] BECU isn't like other financial institutions, and the difference is people.

Because we're not-for-profit, there's no boardroom of billionaires maximizing their margins.

Our biggest stakeholders are people like you.

It's our members who make money meaningful, so we focus on helping them thrive.

It's the art student bringing beauty to his community that makes a college loan matter.

It's the mother building her family's foundation that makes a mortgage matter.

It's people that make BECU matter, people like you.

- [Announcer 2] Meta's mission is to build technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses.

Supporting local artists allows us to shape the way we think about building the next evolution of digital connection.

We are proud to support Black Arts Legacies.

(mellow music) - [Speaker 1] These are necessary conversations.

- [Speaker 2] Ideas come from everywhere.

- [Speaker 3] And the next generation takes them into a new idea.

- [Speaker 4] About us, by us, for us, and near us.

(mellow music continues) (whimsical music) - You know, the early-learning shows for me were companions.

They had a lot of fun.

When I was growing up, each television station in Seattle had a children's television show.

So on channel four, there was "Boomerang".

On channel five, there was "Wunda Wunda".

They were all locally produced.

Duh!

That's embedded in me.

And then, of course, Mr. Rogers, and "Zoobilee Zoo".

(chuckles) "The New Zoo Review".

When Ben Vereen came out on stage, (upbeat music) * I'm Mayor Ben * And here to lend a helping hand * And they were singing and dancing and I thought, "I could do that."

(laughing) My people!

(laughing) (cheerful piano melody) * You are the best you the world will see * * Come along now and share you with me * * Let's learn something new and share feelings too * * 'Cause these are the things to do to be the best you * (piano melody continues) I had a lot of rigor, and routine, and responsibility growing up having two sick siblings, and my parents both worked regular jobs.

But being the oldest, I had a lot of responsibility.

And so television was one way I could escape for a little while.

I found media as my calling, as my love.

Early on in my college career, I really thought I wanted to do theater.

And my two dear friends at the time happened to be two other Japanese women.

And when auditions came out, the three of us were always competing against each other for the cleanup-lady part.

Let me put that in quotes.

And it was infuriating that we could never be considered for the lead role.

I decided I want to go into television, I want to be a producer so that I can identify the best person to be on camera that's sharing expertise.

And the expertise deserves to look like me, my friends, and my gender.

The early days of "Look, Listen, and Learn" were very bittersweet.

I loved my idea for "Look, Listen, and Learn".

I had always loved Mr. Rogers.

I thought it was a great idea, but I thought we needed more versions.

(gentle music) "Look, Listen, and Learn" features the brilliance of Black and brown children for everyone to see.

Racially, and given my gender, folks don't expect to hear myself talking about how I'm like Mr. Rogers.

And we get stuck on those physical attributes.

If I were a white male saying that I'm a local version of Mr. Rogers, folks would be excited.

They were like, "Really?

You're bringing Mr. Rogers back?

Oh, that's great!"

It was early 2000.

That's when I took my first run at "Look, Listen, and Learn."

It didn't work.

The message that I wanted to share of hope and encouragement and learning is fun, and exploring is fun for everybody.

That was the first time I realized that a lot of people who looked at me didn't believe that that message could come in this package.

(gentle music continues) Came back again around 2005, 2007.

Really tried to make a go of it.

Again, we weren't successful.

And it was finally, in 2018, we had everything, all our ducks in a row, and when we finally received the Best Starts for Kids funding, we were able to go into production the next year.

(magical music) - Val is like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.

She is able to pull that radical joy into the work that we do together.

The purpose of the show is to build these children, or to nurture and cultivate these children into, functioning wonderful, caring, aware adults.

And part of that is to be aware of the people who are around you, aware of what your community is, aware of our society.

And that starts with these lessons.

- The Auntie Lena and Possum lines are all checked rigorously to make sure that they are developmentally appropriate and correct.

And that we are working with early-learning benchmarks.

Very much grounded in brain development research.

In the life of the theater, in the life of puppetry, children interacting with puppets, they will often have a conversation with a puppet that they won't have with a caring adult, or any other kind of adult.

And there was such magic there.

Thistle Theater, where Possum comes to us from, I'd done a lot of work with them before "Look, Listen, and Learn".

And so I saw that magic all the time.

And so Auntie Lena is, she is this caring adult that all of us should have in our pockets so that we have someone to go to when we are feeling mad, when we are just, we can't talk.

There's this one episode where Possum is just flabbergasted and he just cannot even get it out.

- I'm, I'm, I'm just so mad!

- Well, I can see that you're upset.

So first, let's take a deep breath and try and calm down.

Breathe in two, three, and out two, three.

- It's that sort of a relationship of like, "Oh, I've got this great little kid who's next door and oh, he has lots of questions for me.

And is interested in learning things."

- Wanna know what happened today?

- Yeah.

What happened, Possum?

- A whole bunch of people walked by my tree, but it was like a big parade, and they were shouting, "Black Lives Matter!"

- Oh, yes!

One of the comments that I got during Black Lives Matter from a local station here, when they were interviewing us, they found us, and they said, "You talk about such hard issues on your show."

And I said, "Stop.

These are not hard issues.

These are necessary conversations."

Everybody should be talking about inequality, and how we can do better and make ourselves better as well as each other and our neighbors.

There is no way, as a Black child, my parents could wait until I was six years old to have a conversation with me about what it meant to be Black in America.

This is a necessary conversation.

If it was a necessary conversation for my parents to have with me as soon as I could walk and talk, then as it should be so for everyone.

(gentle music) Some of the work that we're doing right now as a team is really drilling down into what do we want to be our legacy?

What do we want our statistics to say for us?

We wanna be able to talk about the meaningful work, the systemic work that we're doing in building relationships.

It has been a wonderful and an extraordinary journey.

(gentle music)