"Life is about stepping up to our calling.
For me, that means doing what I believe I am supposed to do in the service of others who may need whatever help I may be able to offer."
That's what Lesleyann Samuel, a Jamaican-born engineer and community leader, has been doing for nearly 40 years, she tells the New York Daily News.
Samuel, who immigrated to the US at age 13 and went on to earn a degree in engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York, says her passion for community service was ignited at an early age by her aunt, a volunteer in Jamaica's Festival Commission.
"I learned then that life is more than just our day-to-day jobs," Samuel says.
"Life is about stepping up to our calling.
For me, that means doing what I believe I am supposed to do in the service of others who may need whatever help I may be able to offer."
After working for a decade at Verizon in Maryland, Samuel moved to New York in 2012 and returned to her alma mater, Immaculate High School in Kingston, Jamaica, where she still volunteers, per the Daily News.
Samuel, who was recently awarded the Kingston College Old Boys Association USA's Community Award for Leadership and Philanthropy, Read the Entire Article
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Jim Fruchterman founded the now 24-year-old social enterprise Benetech, a nonprofit tech company that focuses on developing technology for social good. Fruchterman has also launched a new initiative called Bookshare, which is a membership-only crowdsourced online library for people with disabilities.