When the Peace Corps called asking if I’d like to return to Dominica two months after Category 5 Hurricane Maria, I was at my parents’ house in South Carolina.
When
I first became a Peace Corps Response Volunteer, my intent was to offer the
skills and passion I had acquired as an experienced educator and school leader
to a country that had a need.
If you lived and worked on a Caribbean island for two years, how many problems do you think you'd find? Peace Corps Volunteers Jilia and Greg Vento, a Florida couple serving together in St. Lucia, can count them all on one hand.
The first few years of my federal career in the 1980's were spent at NASA headquarters working for the Business Management Division of the newly initiated Space Station office.
Growing up in New Jersey, I was surrounded by peers who were first generation American or immigrated to the United States at a very young age. I fit the norm in my culturally diverse secondary school.