An Immigrant Family’s Story of Achievement in America

Well into Black History Month, I would be remiss to not comment about the most important professional inspirations in my life besides Mom and Dad. I proudly highlight three elite professionals, my older siblings, Ann-Marie Jones , Peter Green PhD , and Judith Green-McKenzie MD MPH . Their intense relentless pursuit of excellence is admirable.

Leaving a politically absurd Jamaican climate in the mid-1970s to settle in New York City was surreal and harsh; basically going from one cauldron to another. All four of us had been settled and thriving academically at Portland, Jamaica’s Titchfield High School (coincidentally the same school attended decades prior by Vice President Kamala Harris’s father and Stanford economist, Donald Harris ). Our parents decision to emigrate to the United States was a tough one, but the right one. We arrived in rough-and-tumble NYC just days before the infamous power outage of 1977, and into the full blown Summer of Sam . Those awfully brutal times strengthened the bond between family members.

Our parents’ deep love for us and exceptional set of values proved vital. These values had been demonstrated by our father’s relentless drive, from growing up in the Jamaican countryside, to earning his law degree at the prestigious Honorable Society of Lincoln's Inn (London, UK), and becoming a respected legal and political leader; plus my brilliant mother, a highly focused and versatile executioner who made sure all important jobs got done well! Across the extended family, a deep-rooted tradition of pluck, ingenuity and integrity in pursuing excellence, had been well established.

Ann-Marie, the oldest sibling, entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's (RPI) elite engineering program in the late 1970s and completed her chemical engineering degree four years later. She sure endured quite a bit as a black female in that environment, besides executing their grueling engineering curriculum. Ann-Marie remained true to her engineering passion throughout and built a great career with enterprises like Goodyear , Bausch + Lomb , Monsanto , Fluor Corporation and Jacobs .

My brother, Peter, has become a world class scientific researcher, professor and executive leader. His unmatched self-belief, drive and raw brilliance earned him bachelor’s and master’s physics degrees from Hunter College , and a Ph.D. in materials sciences and engineering from Cornell University . He has held tenured engineering professorships at the University of Texas-Austin and the University of Michigan , where he chaired their Department of Materials Sciences and Engineering. Peter also held a managerial research position at Sandia National Labs and is currently the deputy lab director (chief scientist) at National Renewable Energy Labs in Golden, CO. His achievements are plentiful: fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science ; president and fellow of the Materials Research Society ; fellow of the American Physical Society ; fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (London) ; fellow of the American Ceramics Society ; and "Outstanding Referee" for Physical Review Letters/Physical Review . These and other notable achievements are accompanied by seemingly endless published academic research.

Judith, my best friend, offers the ultimate example of pluck and resilience. It was beyond challenging for her to leave close friends and cultural comfort behind as a teenager to land in bluntly cold New York City. Tunneling through pain and disappointment, she dug in to ultimately earn an undergraduate degree from Princeton University , an MD from Yale University , followed by a medical residency, and an MPH degree from NYU and Johns Hopkins , respectively. Judith’s amazing career journey brought her to the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine for the last 20+ years. At the University of Pennsylvania she has been a prolific academic researcher, professor, clinical practitioner, and institutional leader in occupational and environmental medicine; and very recently has been inducted into UPenn's Academy of Master Clinicians . Her contributions to the field has been recognized by being presented the distinguished Kehoe Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Education and Research from the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) .

These examples of black achievement have been laid out plainly for my entire life. This Jamaican immigrant excellence broadens across my extended family covering many generations. So it becomes normal to remain relentless and persistent in overcoming life's general obstacles; plus the additional micro to major ones black folks face while crafting fruitful livelihoods. It's encouraging for us to see that our parents' eight grandchildren are imbued with the similar outsized desire to achieve.