Kiwanis woman of excellence: Dr Patricia Yap

THE Kiwanis Club of New Kingston hosted its annual awards luncheon on June 1, dubbed Celebrating Excellence. The awards honoured five women who have made an invaluable contribution both locally and internationally. The Digicel Foundation was applauded too, and received the ‘Because You Care’ award for their remarkable contribution to education, sports, culture and community development.

We started printing the citations read to the women last week, and continue this week as we help to honour the women for their achievements.

The honourees were professor Verene Shepherd, for excellence in education and Jamaican culture; journalist Barbara Gloudon, for excellence in media and the positive promotion of Jamaican culture; Jazz diva Myrna Hague-Bradshaw, for excellence in entertainment and Jamaica culture; attorney Jacqueline Samuels-Brown, for excellence in the field of law; and dermatologist Dr Patricia Yap, for excellence in medicine and philanthropy.

Here’s Dr Yap.

Jesus said to his disciples, “For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.” Matthew 17: 20-21.

Dr Patricia Yap, yours is a story of inspiration which transcends borders and countries, race and dialect. Yours is truly a testimony that “you can do anything you put your mind to; you can always change your circumstances”. Any child of any race, colour, creed or circumstance can use your life as a template to achieving the best.

As you said, “We can all be a ripple, because when ripples join together, they reach the shore…”

Patricia Yap, yours is by no means a typical Jamaican story. Born from a Jamaican, half-Chinese father from St Elizabeth who had emigrated to China, and a mother from China, your life has been an amazing journey, taking you from one end of the globe, from China, to a virtual spec of an island, where, at the age of 10, you were able to quickly assimilate and imbibe the culture, despite the language barrier.

From behind the counter of a rum shop in Papine, you and your four siblings, two brothers and two sisters, quickly learnt the language, even as you attended Calvary Preparatory School, but your parents, being good, old-fashioned, principled people, whisked the family away after three months to the more temperate and salubrious climate of Mandeville for a fresh start. There, you didn’t go to school, but opted to spend your time helping in the shop and studying the dictionary from cover to cover.

At age 12 you went straight to first form at West Indies College as a private student, because you never had the option of preparing for the Common Entrance Examinations. You vividly recall those days when you walked seven miles every day from school to sell patties and drinks to school children from your parents’ shop. We have it on good authority that your legs, even nearly four decades later, are a testimony to your physical stamina and composite beauty, both inside and out.

Your infectious laughter and bubbly personality belie the endurance you displayed to become class valedictorian at Mount St Joseph Academy, a Catholic school, which you attended after West Indies College. You single-handedly taught yourself chemistry and sought permission to audit chemistry labs at DeCarteret College and then went on to outdo those students there who had had the benefit of full-time tutoring. You even found time to lead a protest or two, when students’ rights were being impinged!

Pat, you did your GCE’s in maths, chemistry, biology, and english and came to Kingston to attend Campion College sixth form in preparation for your undergraduate degree in pure and applied chemistry and your medical degree from the University of the West Indies, Mona. You readily acknowledge that without the advent of free education all that would not have been possible.

You, Pat, believe in the adage of carpe diem. You further received a scholarship from the British Council and attended the University of London, where you graduated from the St Thomas Hospital with a degree in dermatology.

It was by no accident that you decided to be a dermatologist. As a teenager, you had terrible acne. This propelled you into your chosen field. You are so focussed that you eat, sleep and breathe dermatology, so much so that you have jokingly declared medicine to be your hobby. After a little prodding, it was clear that you love reading, walking, travelling, your husband Christopher Berry, renowned stockbroker, and your teenage children William and Lauren — not necessarily in that order.

Yours is a union that has worked, simply because Chris has allowed you the freedom to be and do what you want, whether it is launch your own skincare line, opening your one-stop medical facility called Apex Health Care Associates at Molynes Road or your Apex facility at Portmore Pines Plaza.

In all of this you, Pat, managed to find the time to do an executive MBA and become a fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology. You are an expert in treating the skin of people of colour where you use cutting edge technology and have mastered a procedure of flattening keloids or hair bumps, without surgical intervention. An accomplished and published author of articles on various skin conditions, you continue to break the glass ceiling. You are currently collaborating with HEART Academy on the proposed opening of a college in July 2011 to be called the Apex Skin Institute, to give cosmetologists more clinical training for people of colour.

Pat Yap, you believe in giving back and have never forgotten your benefits from your adopted country. As your late father told you, ‘kindness is not an entitlement. People are kind to you because they want to be’.

Dr Patricia Yap, the Kiwanis Club of New Kingston salutes you for your business acumen, your zest for life and living, your altruism, your grace and professionalism extraordinaire. Your are, indubitably, a woman of excellence.