Melveen Leed to Receive 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award

Melveen Leed. Courtesy photo.

The Pan Pacific Southeast Asian Women Association of Hawaii is honoring Melveen Leed with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

She is only the second recipient from Hawai‘i to receive the award in the PPSEAWAH’s 90 years of service in the Pacific.

PPSEAWAH President Mary Tori Keegan announced that the ceremony honoring Leed is scheduled for Saturday, March 24, 2018, beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the Hawaii Convention Center.

PPSEAWA-Hawaii’s Lifetime Award honoree is selected from a list of distinguished Pacific iconic figures.

Leed has made her marks in myriad of ways in education, television, entertainment, indigenous issues, her philanthropic charity work in the past 50 years, as well as a positive role model for young people in the Pacific and the USA.

Born in Honolulu in 1943 and raised in Moloka’i, she is a multi-talented and versatile vocalist and musician who plays the ‘ukulele, guitar, piano, congas, mandolin, accordion, marimba and many other ethnic instruments. Her music genres cross from Hawaiian and Polynesian to jazz, country, gospel, Latin, pop, reggae, folk and blues. She also sings in 18 languages.

Leed, who had also been crowned Miss Moloka‘i, sang at some of the world’s biggest stages in the U.S., Pacific, Asia, Russia and Europe.

Her charitable music tours and cultural sensibilities among the Pacific island nations made her the ultimate quintessential ambassador of aloha.

Iconic legends and royalties of the entertainment industry who she worked with in the past 50 years in Hawai‘i, Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa and around the Pacific will converge in Waikiki at the Hawaii Convention Center to honor international legendary entertainer Leed.

“Im very humbled to receive such honor,” said Melveen, when she was notified of the award.

According to PPSEAWAH President Keegan, “Melveen epitomizes the spirit of aloha and the ultimate ambassador of Hawai‘i to the world.”

The televised ceremony will include Leed’s music star friends from around the Pacific.

PPSEAWAH has retained the services of Daniel Sataraka to direct the ceremony and entertainment productions for award ceremony.