Ukay was born in Abuja, Nigeria, where he grew up until age seventeen, when he left for South Africa to complete high school. He then moved on to Tufts University, Medford, United States where he obtained his Bachelor’s in Biochemistry and Computer Science. Since graduating in May 2018, he has been working in Dr. Bruce Walker’s lab as a Bioinformatics Analyst, analyzing and visualizing sequencing data for different types of immune cells. In his free time, Ukay steps outs of his comfort zone to try something new. Recently, he tried making roasted halibut with lemons, olives and rosemary, as advertised in The New York Times. (It turned out about a quarter as good!)
What does it mean to do “good work” today?
I face a dilemma in understanding how to carry out “good work” every day. When deciding how to do good work, I might, for example, choose to help a friend achieve a goal by contributing a quota to their GoFundMe page, and the friend might feel helped; yet doing so each day would also mean that I would deplete limited resources. Of course, such an instance is just one scenario, as quandaries, I now realize, are present in many opportunities to do “good work”: affording routine food to the destitute might inadvertently insult their pride; saying “hello” to elderly neighbors might do little when those greeted expect a welcoming conversation; celebrating others might render “smiles” but can, possibly, do little to clean up pain that facile smiles belie.
Despite being ostensibly inevitable, these dilemmas have humbled me and, ultimately, taught me that to do “good work” is to deliver selfless services, however discomfiting they seem. What I think matters little. What really matters is that those I hope to help actually find my actions helpful. Doing good work, to me, means what I do is of adequate help, as perceived by intended (and hopefully unintended) recipients.
Tell us about your understanding of community. What are the communities of which you feel a part?
This question arouses identity conflicts within me. You learn from a young age that you are this or that, only to be told later — by uncritical societal eyes — that you are something else. For me, a perceived shift in identity started where I grew up in my home country, Nigeria, where I was time after time reminded that I am an Igbo tribesman who grew up in the north (where Igbo men rarely abide). That is, I wasn’t Igbo, at least not enough so, in spite of what my parents had taught me.
Funny enough, perceived shifts in identity continued outside Nigeria. When I moved to South Africa to complete high school, my identity “changed,” only this time I was called Nigerian. And later, in the United States (U.S.) and United Kingdom (U.K.), where I relocated to complete undergraduate studies, I was simply “Black,” if not “African,” or mistakenly “African-American.” Bear in mind these terms conjure notable yet divergent images in mind (Black, in a way, means my happiness could become fleeting when feelings of thrill are juxtaposed with unconscious reminders of unjust, racial discrimination; African confers knowing substantially about an immensely rich continent of which I know little), which made me feel like some super morphing organism whose identity is anything but fixed.
Interestingly, that notion made me impute some degree of naivety on those who were eager to trade one label for another. I am perceived as Igbo, Nigerian, African, or Black — and the list is likely incomplete. Whatever my observed identities from the point of view of another, there are landmark characteristics in communities to which I belong: they groomed me in significant ways, without them I’d not be the man I am today, and, fortunately, I call them family, not just community. To those to whom I’m beholden — my family (for affording me nostalgic memories and foundational principles of genuine love, care and comedy for painful issues); my high schools, Federal Government Academy in Nigeria and African Leadership Academy in South Africa; multiple families (for engaging my intellect, pushing me to grow, and challenging me to expect more from others); Tufts in the U.S., Oxford in the U.K., and indeed other institutions across Western Europe; the Global Citizens Initiative (GCI) who, on top of family, is synonymous to true friendship for they not only demand my learning but also invite my teachings; tutors I know in person and authors like Chimamanda Adichie, Chinua Achebe, Dale Carnegie, and Trevor Noah with whom I only interface through their various works; and many, many more — I’m immensely grateful. Once, my communities entailed blood ties and neighbors; now, they’re more numerous, less geographically bounded, and, surprisingly, unbridled in their positive effects on me.
The journey to finding rightful fits within my “communities” wasn’t without errors, yet they afforded unique opportunities to grow. Nigerian, as I’m often labeled, traditionally comes with a sprinkle of sexism, but I’ve grown to know the necessity of lifting women up as equal to men. Where I once subscribed zealously to advancing religious ideas into law, I now advocate for legislation that does not cripple another’s freedom.
Is there a particular role model who has helped inspire you to do “good work”, either real or fictional? What is it about this role model that has inspired you?
I’ve had so many influences over my life that it’s best I limit my recollection to those significant ties that even a faulty memory cannot suppress. Many models stem from literary readings and group discourses (with faculty and peers) during the African Studies (AS) course at African Leadership Academy and during seminars led by facilitators like Dr. Eimer Page at GCI. I think of people like W.E.B. Du Bois, who took up the mantle to stand up for what he believed was the right thing to do, no matter the discomfiture. I think of people like Wangari Mathai, a Kenyan environmental activist and winner of the Nobel Prize, who consistently engaged with her community in social service. People like Ms. Friedman, my AS educator, who showed me why cynicism is important, what to filter as I read or listen or see, and how to do so. Those sets of people have taught and continually teach me how to serve others. In addition, however, my deepest inspirations to do “good work” predate the aforementioned readings and discussions and are based on spiritual tenets I first began to conceive at churches. It’s mandatory to tithe (Deuteronomy 14:22-23, 1 Corinthians 16:2), or, less dogmatically, you can do good work on your terms (2 Corinthians 9:7). Taken together, the Bible opines giving as God’s work and cardinal to unlocking prosperity for all. Although these biblical teachings talk about tithing and giving, I tend to apply their teaching more broadly and creatively, incorporating acts like offering time, thoughtful remarks, physical help, and whatever snags my attention.
It might seem surprising that my role models are distant. You’d expect that my immediate family or close friends continually inspire me to do “good work,” and in many ways, that view is not incorrect. Yet I find my tribal adage, Ora na-azu nwa — it takes a village to raise a child — to be a more inclusive capture of these influences, rightly described as eclectic.
Tell us about your work. What projects are you currently involved with? How might what you are doing now relate to the work you began with GCI?
I currently work as a bioinformatics analyst for Dr. Bruce Walker’s lab at Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. What got me to Ragon? Having lived in South Africa, I was conversant and deeply aware of HIV prevalence in the community; for some women their schooling was interrupted, and their futures hampered by the diagnosis. I was even more troubled when the World Health Organization published a summary which explicates how the African region is disproportionately affected, with 1 in 25 people infected and with two-thirds of worldwide infections (https://www.who.int/gho/hiv/en/). Around the same time, I was learning that health is inextricably linked to economics, as is demonstrated by the current coronavirus pandemic, and to development, since healthy citizens can more actively contribute to society than unhealthy ones. Bear in mind that at the time, I was learning biochemistry and computer science at Tufts University and thought my experiences thus far could somehow contribute to a solution. My interests landed me a spot at Ragon, where I have been contributing towards HIV immunology and vaccine research.
More directly, I support an orphanage at my hometown in Suleja, Nigeria, called God’s Love Trust Orphanage Home (https://aoafoundations.com/aoaf-visits-gods-love-trust-orphanage-home-suleja/). Although the two projects articulated are not directly linked to GCI, they are, in fact, borne out of the humanitarian need to subdue human suffering or enhance pleasures — a conscious effort GCI helped to nourish. I anticipate that the current projects will continue, and new ones will form, and in all, they’ll assist to making lives somewhat easier and happier.
How do you feel your current projects are connected or not to this view of “good work”?
It would be a dream for a therapeutic vaccine for HIV to be completed soon. If that happened, then a large number of downstream problems would be tackled. For instance, infected women will no longer face stigma associated with carrying rattling pills around; normally, people’s behavior debase around women who are considered infected. Likewise, uninfected women will no longer worry about carrying prophylactic pills which can also attract unwanted stigma. As with any speculative effects, the sanguine outlook can be viewed as reaching too far, yet that optimism is needed to pull through in a case as acute as handling HIV infections, particularly in Africa. Whatever the gleaned benefits active help offers, in immune therapies or in raising health awareness, tying those merits to doing “good work” hinges on the appraisal of recipients. Therefore, it is required to understand what those who receive help actually think about the help. Such a metric is better demonstrated with the orphanage I support, as they are wont to give invaluable verbal remarks, sometimes captured by videos.
How and where do you find meaning in your work?
I’ve always been fond of social entrepreneurship and helping my local communities in whatever way I can. In my high school thesis defense, I argued, “Social entrepreneurship is gold, but capital entrepreneurship is the gateway to social entrepreneurship.” Here I was tempering my desire to positively impact my community with the practicality of doing so, especially under situations where resources are circumscribed. Applying the same philosophy to my current work, I knew contributing to health care should be a core focus for many, if not most, social endeavors. (I reasoned that without healthy workers, a lot of benefits like meaningful prosperity and happy living might not ensue.) While health care is important, the more I learned about it, the more I was humbled by the magnitude of the undertaking. So, I decided to focus my efforts on certain types of problems within healthcare.
What I providently settled for was HIV vaccine research, which in 2018, when I graduated, was one of the most pressing issues in my time. Indeed, it remains so, except now I’m also increasingly thinking about coronavirus vaccines, on which I was able to deliver a presentation in the past week.
Tell us about your biggest challenges, and how you work to tackle them.
Finding like minds who are passionate about solving seemingly intractable problems like creating a vaccine for a rapidly mutating HIV that evades the immune system is exacting, especially from a standpoint of evaluating vaccine designs. People with interests within this field, coupled with skills and fueled by desire to translate scientific solution into imminent, practical human therapies, are quite hard to find. That could help to explain why finding the right collaborations within the field is difficult. Nevertheless, I’ve been able to find a niche at Ragon Institute and, fortuitously, have been able to find similar minds by networking with scientists and students through seminars within and outside the institute.
Have you ever faced a dilemma where you weren’t sure what the “right” course of action was? How did you handle this situation?
Certainly. And too often. One significant moment was when I decided to not pursue medicine as a career: in some ways, I was terrified of the decision, as I didn’t know what exactly would be the “right” decision. I ended up following my gut just to make sure that I sought to do what I thought was right. Another notable instance was my choice of whether or not to actively contribute to educating friends about racial issues. Although those willing to learn should work out the right approach to doing so, it can often feel nettlesome when the topic to be learned is as elusive as racism itself — it is difficult to understand what does not occur naturally and, in some ways, is counter-intuitive. This quandary is best illustrated in what I may safely deem the awakening racial consciousness in the United States. I, alongside many others, have known for a while that white cops lynch black bodies. That there will come a time of reckoning for justice to be demanded comes to us with little surprise. The gruesome murders of George Floyd, an unarmed black man allegedly guilty of employing a phony twenty dollar bill, by kneeling on his neck to choke him for eight minutes and forty-eight seconds, and Breonna Taylor, a black woman asleep in her own home, by shooting her with more bullets than needed to kill her, were the culmination of insidious and decades-long racial discrimination. During the weeks that followed those two deaths, I read a wealth of e-mails and texts aimed at addressing systemic racism and racial issues: my workplace sought help to draft a diversity and inclusion statement, and many acquaintances reached out for the first time in many months, even years, to check on how I was doing, and specifically ask how they could help. Given the circumstance, I misconstrued their inquiry to mean that they offered to help me. Upon clarification, it became clear that what they wanted was to learn how to help. What was particularly exciting to see was that many were receptive to discussing a tricky subject, perhaps heretofore not conversant with police brutality—more than enough mainstream black music artists have a song which broaches the topic, and popular films like The Hate U Give do justice to at once informing and entertaining the sympathetic and the curious. To some, it was their first time ever dealing with such a situation, and they were happy to simply hear from me that joining a peaceful protest was an honest attempt to stand in solidarity. Where I’d have once responded with nothing more than a friendly pointer to other resources, in that moment I found it worthwhile to educate others, even though it felt arduous, risked arousing resentment, or was seemingly futile. Trying felt “right.”
