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Sealevel Systems rises high

The hair may have come from his dad, but Ben O’Hanlan credits his philanthropic spirit to his mom. “She had us in church every Sunday as a kid,” says O’Hanlan, president of Sealevel Systems, a Liberty-based, computer-technology company. “We learned you need to return a portion of that which has been given to you.” O’Hanlan grew up in Pickens County and attended the University of Colorado at Boulder. After earning a degree in history, he returned to the Upstate and found himself in the sales department at Datastream, although it was inevitable he would eventually end up at Sealevel Systems, the company his parents started in 1986. “I started at Sealevel in sales,” says O’Hanlan, “then worked up through operations to chief operating officer, then president of the company last year.”