My defining moments were having those adults and even my peers who believed in me coupled with my experiences in Key Club and Student Council . My mom , who made incredible sacrifices to give me opportunities ( Key Club was expensive ) because she understood the remarkable value .
There are many hardworking and bright persons who did not benefit from having a mentor in their lives , a person who decided to expose them because sometimes all we need is exposure . One such experience I got was when I went to a Key Club meeting at St Catherine High School , and it changed my life . This act of giving service in concert with your peers around specific goals was a gamechanger . The Key Club was instrumental in giving me the exposure to speak , lead , and collaborate with others . I traveled and saw how other schools functioned and how other students operated and found out that they were just like my school . Those schools were no better off or worse off than ours . It is a pursuit and a commitment to excellence that we had as children growing up . I have this saying — " we must be so excellent that we cannot be denied ."
As a young woman in Jamaica , I knew I did not want to achieve anything by using my body . I wanted my choices for my body to be mine . I needed to choose to do the right thing when no one was watching . I wanted to be courageous and to be an interrupter , speaking out against racial and social injustice .
TBWM : I want to backtrack a little bit – how is it you gravitated towards the positives rather than the negatives . The nature of people is to usually lean in on the negatives , what made you do differently . Dr . Dunkley : I am a leader in my thoughts and actions . I do not follow the crowd , if you are looking for the easy " amen " in church or someone who will go along to get along , that is not me . It also is nature and nurture . I always asked critical questions . Even in high school , I knew who the good teachers were and who were not . I could not articulate in academic terms at that time what made them effective or ineffective teachers , but now I can . I believe that leadership and social and emotional intelligence are God ' s gifts to me . I believe God blesses us with many gifts , and we lose them if we do not use them . The parable of the talents reminds us to illuminate our gifts . These talents were given to me for a purpose by God that I must fulfill . I want to make sure that I live my gifts and help others to realize theirs .
I cannot keep what makes me unique to myself- So that is the nature part . What do you do with your experiences , how do you respond , and how you see yourself ? I love myself ! A lot , actually ( laughter ). I am not a narcissist , but I grew up with high self-esteem . I take value in who I am as a person and not in material things . The fact that I grew up poor , money was never a determinant for value because then we would be valueless . In particular , my mother , my brother Dwight and my sister Heather , my extended family , then school . Our motto was ' prayer and work conquer all ' – and then reinforced in the faith
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