The hard working Luzan Bucchanan
WESTERN BUREAU — She said most of her friends call her a nerd but Luzan Bucchanan has accomplished a lot.
Her extra curricular activities, which include giving motivational talks to teenagers in jail and volunteering to tutor students at the YMCA, have not stopped her from doing well in school. In fact, for the past two years, she has made both the United States’ National Dean’s and President’s lists by consistently maintaining a grade-point average of 4.0.
A long way from her humble beginnings in rural Jamaica, 26 year-old Luzan is a product of hard work and resilience.
It all began when she was in the eighth grade at Mannings High School in Westmoreland and she asked the then general manager of Sandals Negril, Evatt Bloomfield, for a summer job at the resort.
“She has always shown a tremendous capacity for hard work and has consistently fulfilled the potential that others saw and still see in her,” Bloomfield said. “She has irrepressible, positive energy and was always there with a smile even when things weren’t going so well. This proved infectious and a lot of people responded to it.”
Bloomfield granted Luzan a scholarship to finish her studies at Mannings. As the young girl’s mother was deceased and she did not know her father, the resort found a family to ‘adopt’ her.
“The scholarship takes care of students who are needy and I fell into that category and I have been in that category ever since,” Luzan said with a laugh.
She is now a final-year student at the Bethune Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida where she is pursuing her Bachelor of Science Degree in Hospitality Management and Accounting.
After finishing high school in 1996, Luzan received yet another scholarship to attend the Hocking College in Ohio where she pursued an Associate’s Degree in Accounting and became an All-American scholar — an honour given to students who receive at least a 3.75 grade-point average.
“I like numbers and I’m good with numbers,” said the young woman who plans to pursue a masters degree in finance at the prestigious Columbia University in New York next year.
She plans to return to Sandals — the place where it all started — and be a financial controller if they will have her.
“I’m not sure what they’re going to give me,” she laughed. “I don’t think I could work anywhere else. They’ve made me what I am.”