Meet Janice James

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Janice James a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Janice, thank you so much for joining us today. Let’s jump right into something we’re really interested in hearing about from you – being the only one in the room. So many of us find ourselves as the only woman in the room, the only immigrant or the only artist in the room, etc. Can you talk to us about how you have learned to be effective and successful in situations where you are the only one in the room like you?

We are all unique in our own way, but yes, I have found myself in many spaces where I am the exception to the norm.

I grew up in an impoverished community called Bay Farm Villa in Kingston, Jamaica and I went to an affluent high school, Holy Childhood High School. I started high school at 10 years old as the youngest student in the class. I spent my first year of high school trying my best to hide my age and economic status from all the other students while I quietly observed them. During that time, I identified that older students garnered attention and respect by speaking assertively. I learned the importance of being an assertive speaker from them. I successfully navigated the second year of high school onwards by consistently speaking assertively to my peers and my teachers.

I graduated Holy Childhood High School at age 15 and transitioned to my senior year of high school in America. Once again, I was the youngest in my class, but this time in a new country with my Jamaican accent and very few students who looked like me. At first, I did not speak in class at all because I feared no one would understand me or worse they would make fun of my accent. One day I turned in my Marine Biology project and my teacher insisted that I talk to the class about all the steps I took to build an alligator out of paper mâché. This was the first day my classmates heard my voice and to my surprise they complimented me on my accent. It was refreshing to learn that even though I was the only one in the room that looked like me, my classmates were all very interested to hear what I had to say. I gained confidence in my uniqueness that day.

By age 16, I was a college student in America. As a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) major, I was the youngest student, the only female in most of my classes and one of the two black people in the room. At this point, I started to question why I kept landing in spaces where no one else looked or sounded like me. Then, I realized that I was being placed in these spaces to disrupt the norm. This epiphany helped me to understand, accept and appreciate the responsibility of using my voice in spaces where voices like mine are usually absent.

I am from very humble beginnings, I am an immigrant, and now I am a black female in a predominantly white male industry. According to statistics, my voice is unique in every room that I enter, and I often find that I am the only one in the room that looks like me. My academic experience and over a decade of work in the Information Technology (IT) industry has taught me that the most effective way to use my unique voice is to ensure that what I say has meaningful impact. In other words, I speak to enhance discussions, not prolong them. I speak calmly and confidently to ensure that I connect with listeners in the room. In rooms where listeners are not immediately receptive, I find that maintaining a consistent tone while speaking asserts my right to be heard and subtly informs them that I will not be deterred. Earlier in my career, experts would inadvertently exclude beginners, like me, from conversations by using jargon or complex language. I am successful at speaking because I take pride in explaining complex systems in their simplest form for the benefit of beginners who are learning to be experts.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

During the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020, I started sketching and later discovered my love for acrylic painting. Since then, I have been sketching and painting faces mostly to work on my technique and posting them on my Instagram page at Iam_JahNiece which is the phonetic spelling of my name. When lockdown lifted and I went back to the office as an IT Professional, I decided it was also time for me to go back to school so I registered for my PhD in Computer Science at Nova Southeastern University in Fall 2022. I am currently registered for my last semester, and I have learned so much about myself on this PhD journey. These past two years have been exciting, stressful, challenging and beautiful.

I was able to complete my core classes in two semesters. Shortly thereafter, I started working on my research. Long nights, weekends, discipline and many work sessions with my dissertation chair propelled me one semester ahead of schedule by fall 2023. Working full time in IT while pursuing a PhD has been rough, but very rewarding as I am learning something new every day and I love to learn. These days I am focused on presenting my work in an academic setting and building the code to support the new concept that I will be introducing to the industry in the coming year. Thanks to the support of my family, friends, coworkers and my dissertation chair, I am getting closer to fulfilling my lifelong goal of earning my doctorate. I have learned that a PhD in Computer Science is one of the hardest PhDs to get so I am looking forward to joining the <1% of black females who already possess their Computer Science PhD. Eventually, I hope to also join the short list of black female STEM College Professors.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Three skills that have been most impactful on my journey are planning, prioritization and attention to detail. Fortunately, my experience in IT helps me with planning because I automatically approach problems and goals in the same way that I would approach building new code. The first step is to identify the main goal or problem that you want to solve. Then, break the main goal into sub goals and identify the task(s) required to complete them. Implement the easiest sub goal first so you can learn how to accomplish the other sub goals and establish a baseline for success.

As an IT professional and PhD candidate, prioritization is a primary skill that I use daily. The tasks associated with both roles are driven by delivery deadlines, but prioritizing my life outside of these two roles impacts when tasks get fully or partially completed. The highest priority for me daily is to move my progress needle on all tasks that have delivery deadlines less than one week. I use the calendar on my phone and a white erase board with a monthly calendar to help me keep track of my deadlines.

My natural curiosity continuously improves my attention to detail. I always want to understand the how, what, when, where and why of everything around me. I find that asking questions is the best way to develop this skill because the information overload trains my brain to associate more details with a single subject. I have been told that my attention to detail is unparalleled because I did not own a computer while I pursued my associate’s degree in computer programming at Keiser University. I wrote the code solutions for my homework problems with paper and pen. Then, I would get to campus one hour before class to get to the library and type my code solutions. Nine times out of ten, my code would work on the first try without debugging. I completed my first year at age 17, but I had to drop out of college due to financial hardship. I had to learn how to drive and purchase my first car before I could go back to complete my second year. It took me eight years to complete a two-year degree, but thanks to my attention to detail, I was able to graduate with a 4.0 GPA as President of the Student Government Association.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

The most impactful thing my parents ever did for me was to teach me the value of hard work and a positive attitude. As I stated earlier, I am from very humble beginnings. My parents did not have the means to send me to the affluent high school that I attended, but when my grades placed me there, my father worked hard to make it happen. Even while I was registering for college in America, my mother had no idea where she would find the funds for my first semester. Over the years, I have watched my mother work multiple jobs simultaneously to provide food, shelter, education and other necessities. I have never witnessed either of my parents call out sick from work. I adopted their work ethic as I worked a full-time job and a part-time job concurrently while taking five classes per semester in pursuit of my bachelor’s degree. My early mornings started at 6 am to get ready for work, late nights finishing up assignments ended at 2 am and that became the norm for me for a few years.

I don’t drink coffee or energy drinks so there were many mornings when I was simply too tired to keep going. Whenever I felt the need to stay home, I checked my mother’s room, and her well-made bed reminded me that she was already out working hard at her first job. The mental image of her getting up early to get on the road to work before me was always enough to motivate me to pull it together and go to work myself. My hard work paid off when I was inducted into Delta Epsilon Iota and ranked in NSU’s top 10 % of undergraduates. My work ethic can only be attributed to my parents. My positive mindset developed from observing my parents and others happily doing whatever was necessary to provide for their families while I was raised in Bay Farm Villa. After years of knowing me and how my mind operates, a friend of mine told me that if I made up my mind about a mission, everyone had a choice to either be onboard or overboard, but the mission would certainly be accomplished. My mission when I started college was to graduate debt-free. I was told the mission was impossible, but I have never taken out a student loan and I am a PhD candidate today.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iam_jahniece/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janicej637/