MERIT mentorship program bolsters future STEM leaders
As a teenager, I was shy and introverted, and I had many insecurities stemming from growing up in a working-class household and often being the only black student in my honors classes at Cape Henlopen High School.
No one in my family had ever completed college. As a college-bound student, I was in uncharted territory.
When John Hollis, the driving force behind Minority Engineering Regional Incentive Training, selected me to be a team leader in the annual bridge-building competition, I was shocked. I had not volunteered. I preferred to stay in the background and not be noticed.
We had a draft, of sorts, where we could pick our teammates from the pool of other students, and I remember deliberately picking others who were like me – quiet, keeping to themselves, often unnoticed by our peers. The competition combined tests of engineering and public speaking. Our team chemistry was phenomenal, and I was shocked when we won the competition.
MERIT gave me many valuable opportunities. The science enrichment activities helped me to excel academically. Various adult mentors, like John Oliver, were crucial guides. The repeated activities that honed our public speaking skills brought me out of my shell. I also was able to meet role models like Dr. Benjamin Carson, who inspired my love for medicine. However, the challenge of being a team leader provided me with a priceless lesson that I had the capacity and ability to lead.
I drew strength from the lessons of the bridge-building competition at every stage of my adult life when I was called to exercise leadership in new settings far beyond my small hometown of Milton. I went on to complete my undergraduate studies at Yale. I then moved to New York City and embarked on a career in nonprofit community organizing and philanthropy. Along the way, I earned a master of public administration degree from New York University, and I traveled across the country and around the globe.
In 2010, I decided to change careers and pursue my childhood dream of becoming a doctor. I completed a post-baccalaureate program at City College of New York so I could earn the credits to apply to medical school. Ultimately, I earned my MD from SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. Now, I am nearing the end of my first year of residency in internal medicine at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, after which I will move on to complete a three-year residency in dermatology.
All along the way, I doubted myself. Yet it was the courage to step up and lead in spite of doubt, which I first learned during the MERIT bridge-building competition, that kept me going. I am forever grateful and indebted to my MERIT family for setting me up with the skills needed for success.
