Making Good on Her Opportunities

Imani Duncan MPA/ID 2001

It would be easy to laugh at the Jamaican newspaper that referred to Imani Duncan MPA/ID 2001 as a “regular Energizer bunny” if the analogy — although a bit silly — wasn’t actually on the mark. Sitting in Town Hall one afternoon, talking about an impressive list of things she’s done, is doing, and plans to do, Duncan can’t sit still. She never actually gets out of her chair, but her arms and hands fly through the air as she talks about her reign as Miss Jamaica World 1995, her plan to go to Oxford in three years to get her PhD, and the chapter she is co-authoring with Kennedy School Lecturer Michael Woolcock on the political origins and social foundations of violence in Jamaica’s largest city, Kingston, where she grew up, for a forthcoming book published by a Yale University/United Nations program.

When asked if being animated is an inherited trait, Duncan laughs and rolls her eyes — she’s definitely heard this question before.

“I have a certain energy level that does not run throughout my family,” she says, explaining that as the second youngest of eight siblings, there’s a range of types in her family. “However, we are all active in some way.”

The “we” includes her parents, whom Duncan says have had a big impact on her social consciousness. Her mother, Grace, is director of an association for mental retardation in Jamaica. Her father, D.K., described by a Jamaican newspaper as an “outspoken man” who “says his piece and lets the chips lie where they fall,” was minister of mobilization and general secretary of the People’s National Party during the 1970s under former Prime Minister Michael Manley. It was her father who first introduced her to civil rights issues after the family moved to an all-white community in Kingston and several white parents refused to let their children play with her.

“I was upset and confused, but then my father got me two videotapes: one on Martin Luther King and the other on Malcolm X,” Duncan says. “This took the blinders off. At the age of 10, I knew I had another role to play.”

“As a result, social justice and equity undercut everything I do,” she says, including her decision to take a job after graduation with ontheFRONTIER, a Cambridge-based organization that helps companies worldwide, particularly in developing nations, become more competitive and prosperous. Throughout the fall, she worked in Jamaica with the ministry of industry, commerce, and technology on ways that Jamaican businesses could become a part of the global economy. And in February she went to Rwanda to work on a two-year project with President Kagame’s office called “Creating Prosperity Through Innovation, Competitiveness, and Improved Government Performance.”

But perhaps the project that gets Duncan the most animated is the NGO she started with another Kennedy School student, Adam Taylor MPP 2001. After many late nights mapping out a plan with Professor Jeffrey Sachs in his office at the Center for International Development, Global Justice was born. Designed to empower young people to be informed activists, the group’s biggest campaign to date (the Student Global AIDS Campaign) has become the nation’s largest student network devoted to combating the global AIDS crisis, with members at 188 high schools, colleges, and graduate schools across 43 states. Students have lobbied members of Congress and held a conference in the fall. The campaign is also one of three projects receiving proceeds from the “What’s Going On” benefit CD organized by U2 lead singer, Bono, in conjunction with Artists Against AIDS Worldwide.

It’s enough to leave most people out of breath, but Duncan just seems to be gaining speed.

“To whom much is given, much is required,” she says, looking around the hall, which is getting crowded with students. “I’ve been given so many opportunities in my life.I know that I have to make good on that.”

— Lory Hough

For more information about Global Justice and the Student Global AIDS Campaign, go to www.stopglobalaids.org. For details about the “What’s Going On” CD, go to www.aaaw.org/.