Fostering Solutions

Keeping it Positive: Keys to Leadership from Dr. Oneeka Williams

Dr. Oneeka Williams, award-winning author, educator, entrepreneur, speaker, storyteller, urologic surgeon, and Positivity Catalyst, is the product of a science teacher mom and journalist father. Born and raised in Guyana and Barbados, she is on a mission to educate, elevate and empower and believes we can use the positive power of our stories to defeat negativity so we can achieve whole health, pursue our dreams, and live a life without limits. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Medical School, she has used her experiences and life philosophy as the catapult to impact the lives of her patients and community. Learn more about Dr. Williams at https://droneekawilliams.com/

Engineering Higher Education: Keys to Leadership from Dr. T. Ramon Stuart

Raised in the small coal-mining town of Welch, West Virginia, Dr. T. Ramon Stuart realized at a very young age the transformative impact that education could have on one’s life, one’s family and ultimately one’s community. This realization led him to study engineering and higher education administration. His higher education career started at West Virginia State University where he was a faculty member and administrator. Dr. Stuart was recently named President of Clayton State University in Georgia. According to Dr. Stuart, his humble beginnings in McDowell County taught him how to treat people, “because you couldn't act as though you were better than anyone because everybody was trying to make $1 out of 15 cents. And when you know who you are, you understand that, as Luke once reminded us that to whom much is given much as expected.”

Keys to Leadership from Amy Goodwin: First Female Mayor of Charleston, West Virginia

As the first female Mayor of Charleston, West Virginia, Amy Shuler Goodwin never imagined that she would spend most of her first term leading the state’s largest city through a pandemic. However, her careers in journalism, public relations, communications, and state tourism equipped her for leadership in challenging times. Since taking office in January 2019, Mayor Goodwin has prioritized fiscal accountability, efficient processes, fairness and forward-thinking policies, and programming. 

 

 

Bank On It: Keys To Leadership From Christy Elliott

As a 21-year-old college senior at Concord University, Christy L. Elliott had the audacity to ask a CEO about a job at his bank, one of the largest in the country. In less than a week, she had an interview with the Market President and a job offer from BB&T Bank, now Truist. Since joining BB&T in 2004, Christy has served as a Financial Wellness Consultant, Merchant Sales Consultant, and Commercial Banker before being named Market President in May 2017. In her current role, she manages the market franchise and is responsible for BB&T’s banking operations in seven West Virginia counties. 

 

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Tap unto your power grid: Keys to Leadership from Charles Patton

Dr. Foster’s guest on this episode of Fostering Solutions is Mr. Charles Patton. Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Charles is an accomplished leader who has not lost the common touch. Dr. Foster remembers him from her days at the Kanawha Institute for Social Research & Action (KISRA) when he was then serving as Chief Operating Officer at the Appalachian Power Company. Instead of simply mailing a grant award check, Charles took time to tour KISRA and encourage the staff, by sharing anecdotes from his humble beginnings. 

He is currently the Executive Vice President, External Affairs for American Electric Power (AEP) and is based in Columbus, Ohio. In this role, Charles leads AEP’s customer services, communications, regulatory, federal public policy and corporate sustainability organizations. A publicly traded company, AEP is an electric utility that delivers electricity to more than five million customers in 11 states and provides energy services in 27 states. This conversation is chockfull of leadership wisdom from a distinguished leader.

Get Covered: Keys to Leadership from Don Wilson

Mr. Donteako Wilson is Dr. Foster’s guest on this episode of Fostering Solutions. A native West Virginian, Don is the Managing Partner of Capital Insurance Group (CIG) and runs their Charleston, West Virginia and Columbus, Ohio offices. CIG is a fast-growing business which, after being in existence for less than five years, now has 15 offices in 12 states. Don has entrepreneurship in his genes. He started his first business venture at a mere 21 years of age, having been inspired by his mom. Undoubtedly, Don has achieved tremendous business success and is a role model. Click the link below and listen to this episode of Fostering Solutions to learn about Donteako Wilson’s keys to leadership.

It‘s teatime somewhere: International leadership in herbal teas with Mark Dalgety

Mr. Mark Dalgety is Dr. Foster’s guest on this episode of Fostering Solutions, a part of the Keys to Leadership Series. Mark is the founder of Dalgety Teas, the largest tea company owned by someone of Caribbean descent in Europe. Twenty-five years ago, Mark started drying Corilla (Cerassie) bush at his home in Georgetown, Guyana, and packaging it for sale in the United Kingdom. Then, using his chemical engineering skills and creativity, buoyed by his entrepreneurial spirit, Mark applied tea-bagging technology to what West Indians call “bush tea.” Today, Dalgety Teas has over 30 variants of herbal teas, which are sold in the UK’s top supermarket chains, including Tesco, Sainsbury, and Asda. Mark also exports his delicious teas to numerous European countries, South Korea, and China. His latest venture, which hit the global market in 2020-21, was the commissioning of Dalgety Ghana Ltd, which has begun market penetration of the African continent with its 1.5 billion inhabitants. Check out www.dalgety.co for more information about Dalgety Teas.

 

Stimulating STEM in West Virginia with Dr. Afrin Naz

Dr. Afrin Naz is Dr. Foster’s guest on this episode of Fostering Solutions. Dr. Naz is an Associate Professor at the Computer Science and Information Systems department at West Virginia University, Beckley campus. She is also the regional co-director of WVU Center for Excellence in STEM Education. She received her PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of North Texas. She received more than 26 grants and authored numerous conference and journal papers. Dr. Naz is the Google Ambassador in West Virginia and arranged 6 face to face and online Computer Science workshops for k12 teachers at West Virginia. She is the founding Director of STEM Summer Academy in West Virginia and has also organized more than 12 workshops and camps for K-12 teachers and students. She serves as the Division Chair of the Computers in Education division of American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). She served on the Strategic Committee of West Virginia Department of Education. She is the director of West Virginia affiliate of NCWIT (National Center of Women and Information Technology), an ABET IDEAL scholar and West Virginia TECH Golden Bear Scholar. Dr. Naz is also the founding director of EMPOWERS (Establishing Mentoring Pipeline of Women through Education and Research in STEM).

STEMGuyana with Karen Abrams

Karen Anne Abrams is Dr. Foster’s guest on this episode of Fostering Solutions. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Howard University and an MBA degree in Marketing from California State University at San Francisco. Ms. Abrams spent more than ten years as a Technology Executive in Corporate America working for Atlanta based Mindspring Networks and later Southern California based, Earthlink Networks.

 

Karen is the pioneer who championed the introduction and national expansion of STEM Robotics, targeted to school aged children in Guyana.  Abrams was determined to ensure that Guyanese youth be granted access to the same opportunities and preparation in technology education that is routinely afforded young people in wealthier countries and more frequently to youth from nearly all countries in the world.

 

To that end, in 2016 Ms. Abrams worked with The First Lady’s Office, the Diaspora, her own children and various public and private agencies in Guyana to introduce four robot building and programming camps at the Lusignan and Buxton villages and at two locations in Georgetown, Guyana.  More than two hundred children and ten future club coaches were trained and certified in Lego Mindstorm robot building and programming under this program.  

 

Those seeds of technology planted, gave birth to an expansion to over seventy STEM clubs across all ten regions in Guyana and more than one hundred unanswered requests for club expansion into far flung communities: resulting in the exposure of thousands of Guyanese youth to robotics. In March of 2017, Ms. Abrams recruited and helped to prepare a novice Guyana national robotics team, to a tenth-place world ranking out of one hundred sixty countries at the July 2017 First Global Robotics Olympics held in Washington DC.  In 2019, the Guyana robotics national team won the prestigious Albert Einstein gold medal award from among one hundred ninety participating nations at the First Global Robotics challenge in Dubai.

 

Karen Abrams also helped to pioneer the development of a Ministry of Education sponsored National Grade Six Assessment test preparation mobile app and a national pilot Robot building and Scratch programming league, to engage and educate Guyanese youth in robotics and coding. All of the STEM initiatives organized by STEM Guyana, an organization co-founded by Abrams and her college-aged children, will strengthen collaboration, conflict resolution and communication among youth, while developing their creative, problem solving, technical and academic skills.

 

Ms. Abrams’ history of giving back goes back to representing Guyana at the National Level in the Caribbean National Basketball championship for more than 5 years; helping to win the National Championship for the Guyana Women’s team in 1992, introducing a high school basketball league to Guyana back in 2008, investing in call center business in the 2000’s and 8 years of contributing to the private sector development with her weekly column in Stabroek News business section.  Karen was also recently presented with the prestigious Guyana 2018 Golden Arrow Of Achievement award for her work with STEMGuyana.

 

Karen Abrams is married to former National Basketball Player Leon Christian.  They have four children, three of whom are in college at Stanford University, Cornell University and New York University.  The entire family remains committed to making ongoing contributions to the growth and development of Guyana.

Fostering Solutions - Making Moves in the Automotive Industry with Shamaya A. Morris

Shamaya A. Morris is Dr. Foster’s guest on this Episode of Fostering Solutions. Shamaya is currently a Production Group Leader at Toyota Motor Manufacturing in WV (TMMWV), a two million square foot facility producing engines and transmissions for Toyota and Lexus. Her previous role as a production engineer was to provide system solutions and engineering technologies for the transmission assembly line she supports. 

Shamaya earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Industrial Engineering and Management Systems from West Virginia University. As a West Virginia native, Shamaya has lived in WV her entire life and loves doing life here as an engineer in the manufacturing field.