OLIVE Davis is flying the Jamaican flag high in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, having dedicated her life to teaching entrepreneurship to young people in the highly successful “innovation hub of the world”, home to the world’s top tech firms such as Google, Apple and Microsoft.

This year, she celebrates 10 years of employment to the University of California, Berkeley, where she founded and directs Berkeley Business Academy for Youth (BBAY), a summer business programme which exposes young people to various aspects of business. Her work within the Institute of Business and Social Impact at the Haas School of Business at the university also sees her interacting with under-served young people with interest in or talent for business, especially through the Young Entrepreneurs at Haas (YEAH) programme. She has over 20 years of youth development and programing experience, having run several youth business programmes in universities and organisations in the Bay Area.

Davis told the

Jamaica Observer that her work with young people is invaluable to her.

“I am extremely excited that the work that I do impacts youth. And not only that it impacts youth, but it impacts youth who either have not considered business and/or are reaching out to a field that’s growing in terms of innovation and developing products and services that make a difference in our community. That, to me, is everlasting.

I can’t tell you I often sit down and think about how many lives I’ve touched, not only by creating this programme but in working with YEAH and just in my lifetime; but to be giving back to the community and doing it from a grassroots perspective is absolutely fulfilling. So, for me, this is not only a privilege, it is an honour,” she said.

In addition to her work at Berkeley, she has run business programmes at other universities, including Stanford, and for several organisations including tech firm Galileo.

Reaching success was not without its obstacles, but the teacher takes lessons from her experiences.

“There have been many challenges that I faced on the road to success. I remember before I got my degree, knocking on doors and was told that I needed a degree to get the position that I was looking for, so I went out and got a degree. And I remember knocking on those same doors again and was told that I now needed the experience, now that I had the degree. So, yes, there are obstacles and there are challenges in life, but if we continue to look at them as such we’ll never progress. What I did to overcome those obstacles or challenges was to just continue to be persistent [and] to build my knowledge as I went along,” she said, using BBAY as an example.

Davis said her Jamaican heritage has also helped her overcome challenges.

“I’m sure there are challenges with anyone who tries to do anything out of the box [and especially] as a black woman, but I feel like I’ve overcome them because I am from Jamaica and, in my mind, when I was raised in Jamaica there was no challenge that we couldn’t overcome.

“I always reflect on the fact that when I [come] home the majority is black and we are ‘running’ things, and doing things, and achieving things. So the way that I’ve overcome that is not only trusting in God and allowing him to lead me, but also making sure that I reflect on my roots and where I come from. I have a lot of pride inside of me and I take that with me when I step into a situation that I know is probably going to be challenging, and I pray, pray pray pray,” she told Career & Education.

Davis was nine when she migrated to the US.

She said her development of BBAY was born out of a desire to strengthen YEAH, which was funded exclusively by gifts and grants.

“I thought, ‘We have a wonderful brand and we have a wonderful university campus and I am teaching at other universities and here we have this programme that needs funding. I could create a programme using our brand that would bring money into the university’,” she recalled, making reference to the Berkeley brand.

“I took the idea to the dean and he initially thought it was something that wouldn’t work out. Later on, I decided to take it to the dean of instructions and he said, ‘Go for it! I’ll give you five years to make it work’,” Davis recounted.

Asked how she manages to stand out in the highly competitive Bay Area, the Jamaica native who hails from Kingston, said networking is key.

“I knew that networking played a big part in life, and I learned from college that oftentimes it’s not just what you know, it’s who you know, and I reached out to a lot of people to gain more information and to gain more knowledge and to learn more about the things that I didn’t know [whether] because I wasn’t in the right surroundings or I wasn’t aware of them. So I think one of the biggest ways in which I overcame those challenges was the way in which I networked with people on my level, and those above me,” Davis told Career & Education.

She began tertiary education studying mathematics at University of California, but later applied for and was accepted to the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in business. Prior to that, she attended Bethune Middle School and Freemont High School, both in California. This came after Alpha Primary in Jamaica.

Throughout her educational and professional life, Davis has held several leadership roles and has copped numerous awards, including a national business award, one of 10 Miller Scholarships for students who are outstanding in community service in university, and most recently, a merit award at UC Berkeley. In high school, she was student body vice-president.

Before teaching, Davis worked as a paralegal officer and a sales representative at a company called PeopleSoft.

The BBAY director told Career & Education that her current focus is to replicate BBAY on the island, as she has a keen interest in giving back to her home country. So far, she has been scouting Jamaican high school students for placement in BBAY’s residential summer programme and was in the island last month on a recruiting drive. Last year, she selected three students — Merl Grove High School alum Tamoyah Cherrington, and Wolmer’s Boys’ School graduates Aldane Walters and Delmar Francis. They were among an international cohort of 50.