- I grew up in Jamaica, West Indies. My mother was my first and still my most important mentor. She was the type of person if you told her you wanted to be an astronaut, she would start clearing the backyard to build a spaceship. She taught my siblings and I how to dream big and that nothing was impossible. I have mimicked her style of parenting with my own kids.
- When we were each eight years old, My mother had my three siblings and I do a course that taught us how to focus and compartmentalize, especially on very difficult things, how to set and achieve goals both personally and academically and that anything in life was possible, you just had to figure out how you could go about achieving anything you set your mind to. The course was taught from a child’s perspective, but I still apply the lessons from that course today in my personal and professional lives.
- One of things my mother also did, was to have us as siblings read each other’s literature books,for the sibling older than you, the summer before school restarted. My siblings and I are each separated by four years, so at nine years old, I was reading my older brother’s (who was then 13 years old) literature books. I read To Kill A Mockingbird, A House For Mr. Biswas and Great Expectations. Those books that summer changed my life and I decided then that I wanted to be a professor, but I also wanted to be an author.
- My courses in high school were mainly math and science courses and I also did an Accounting course, which I loved. When it came time to attend University, I chose Accounting which shocked everyone because I had gotten really good grades in my math and science courses, but Accounting was what I wanted to study.
- I am now going into my 28th year at Siena, where I teach in the Management department. I went to an all girls Catholic Franciscan boarding high school which gave me some of my fondest childhood memories, so I was very familiar with Franciscan values and what that means to live it. So for me, Siena felt like coming home.
- I did my Ph.D. at SUNY Albany in Organizational Studies and had my dissertation published as my first book. My research and books focus on women entrepreneurs across racial, ethnic and geographic lines. I just wrapped up my fourth book, which will be published this academic year and I am working on my fifth book which will be completed by the end of next summer. I have already sketched out my sixth book and cannot wait to get started.
- I live right here in Latham, with my husband, Andrew and my four kids. Andrew and I have been married 34 years and we came to the United States from Jamaica together to pursue our Ph.D.s - he did his in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering.
- On a personal level, family means a lot to me and we spend a lot of time together although all my kids are away at college, doing their undergraduate and graduate degrees. In my systematic way of thinking, we go to visit each child one weekend a month, so we see all four kids every month.
- I have travelled abroad with my kids every summer since they were six years old and I have taken them to every continent except Antarctica, visiting over 20 countries. Before high school, when I travelled with them, I always found a local school and registered them as students and had them attend classes for some portion of our time in that country.
- I love living in the Capital Region. It is close to NYC, Boston, Montreal and to an extent Toronto, where my sister lives. In addition, on every given weekend and many times during the week there is so much to do here. You can be at a balloon festival, a chilli cookoff, a state fair, skiing in the winter, swimming in the summer. My kids absolutely loved growing up in the Capital Region.
