by Kevin Cummings, Messenger Staff Writer
Osei Hill is a man with a charge.
He sits across the table at Stirling’s Coffee House with his energy in check, but the current is still there, circulating.
Tuskegee, Ala., is where that charge was born, a place where he grew up with two older brothers he admired, fishing with grasshoppers in the family pond. His parents, both dedicated educators at the historic Tuskegee University, instilled noble aspirations in their sons. Walter and Jill Hill gave all three boys names that carried a mission with it, “a charge.”
Osei Kofi Tutu I was a 17th-century king in west Africa who formed an alliance among warring tribes to found the Empire of Ashanti. Osei, 27, sees his charge as empowering and connecting people.
“Honestly, I feel like every single day of my entire life has been preparing me for this special calling,” he says. “Bringing people together is more than just what I really like to do; it’s what I must do.”
People who spend much time around Osei know that he is frenetic and frequently joking, but today he’s mostly serious.
As an architecture and design teacher at his alma mater, St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School, his students often design products for actual businesses or philanthropic efforts. This semester his high school students are designing a transitional café in one of Mexico’s travel destinations, while his middle- schoolers are doing an interdisciplinary design project aimed at bringing aid to a young person currently living through the Syrian refugee crisis.
“The problems that face our young people are both complex and multilayered,” he says. “My obligation to them as a design instructor is to challenge them to channel creative thinking into innovative yet tangible results. When my students walk away from the class, they’ve not only gotten better, but also made something better.”
Osei says SAS and the Sewanee community shaped him when he was a student.
“I have been absolutely in love with this mystical small mountain garden since I first visited in the summer of 2004 as a high school sophomore,” he says. He graduated from SAS in 2007, where he was, among other things, the senior class president and a proctor.
“The people of this school and community were very influential in my development as an artist, community enthusiast and energized leader of young people. It was such a contrast to my previous school experience that honestly, even in high school, I dreamt about one day returning to this community to continue its legacy of excellence in education.”
Osei comes from an accomplished, close-knit and bedrock family, and when relatives gather at the table during holidays, they each share their current projects and dreams. Then family members give advice and offer ways they can help one another succeed.
“To be able to stop for a moment as a family and simply invest our time and energy into each other’s success is something I cherish at my core. Every second is absolutely priceless,” he says.
One of his own dreams is to create ways to offer architecture and design curriculums to students in a variety of socially and economically diverse schools and communities. He’s already created the architectural plans for a mobile design lab in a retro-fitted catering truck.
“There is a lot of need in a lot of places,” Osei says. “If I can be a part of training the young people in those places on how to use design to creatively solve the problems of their communities, I think there could be some serious opportunity for solution-driven growth in both our local and global communities.”
In addition to being an educator, Osei also does quite a bit of design and marketing consulting, a spur of his former life as a designer in Atlanta. His work spans a variety of interests and professions, including nonprofits, sports, music and his current project, agribusiness.
The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church is also an integral part of Osei’s life. His great-grandfather, grandfather and uncle were all ministers in the AME Church, and Osei just finished a four-year term for the AME Church, promoting voter education and registration for young people in the United States and internationally.
In addition, Osei is a prolific painter, a lover of travel and an SAS assistant basketball coach. This past summer he helped coach at the Philadelphia 76ers’ basketball camps for talented young players from around the world. He also found time to be a part of the talent relations team for the Essence Festival in New Orleans, helping make sure big-name performers have an enjoyable experience as they prepare to entertain more than 50,000 fans.
“You get to see more in the person, rather than the performance or song you love; you get to see who they are as people,” Osei says. “That’s a big thing for me. I’m drawn to those authentic moments in life where you get to not only see more in a person, but also then help them to see more in themselves.
“It’s the same type of thing as to why I’m drawn to the classroom and drawn to be being a coach,” he adds. “Because I just really, really love people, and my focus has always really just been about celebrating other people.”
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