Karen Green learned early the power and value of negotiating skills.
It was 1976. She had passed the Common Entrance (the then major high school entrance exams) for Catholic-run Alpha Girls, but was set on going to St Hugh's, named after the French-born (and initially Catholic) medieval bishop of Lincoln, England.
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Instructing her driver to take her to St, Hugh's, she pleaded her case passionately, telling the then principal, Mrs/ Thomas it would be impossible for her to focus and learn at the Convent of Mercy Academy and that her future lay at St Hugh's. Eventually successful, she earned a spot in the newly created Extension programme at the school of her choice.
That experience, and her ensuing tenure at St Hugh's helped mold here, she says, into the woman she is today. If so, then the institution - and whatever the source of her negotiating gifts - deserve commendation. Karen Green is a major figure in the U.S. Democratic Party, having served with Organizing for America (OFA) under then President Barack Obama as well as State Coalition Director for the Democratic Party and Regional Director for the gubernatorial campaign of former Miami Beach mayor Phillip Levine.
That combination of skill, savvy and passion now guide her in her current role as Chair - Diversity & Inclusion - of the Florida Democratic Party.
For those of you who might be wondering how significant the latter post is, just look at the current election cycle, with what many are describing as a historic Midterm Election only just coming to a close (Green, at a Past Students lunch for St Hugh's, was intermittently checking bulletins on the manual recount for the Senate race during the course of the banquet). As it has in votes past (including the 2016 Presidential election) Florida's races (Senate gubernatorial and state legislature) took on national importance at a time when diversity is being seriously challenged by Donald Trump's divisive rhetoric and policies.
But that's exactly the kind of challenge that Karen Green warms to. Just as with Texas and California, the state of Florida is on the front line of the age-old and still-evolving debate on immigrants - the scale and mechanics of this issue help to define the very nature of the U.S. Green knows the "Immigrant's Song" firsthand, and knows too, the multiple ways that diversity plays out on the ground in Florida and throughout the South. She knows that, contrary to assumption, Jamaicans in the US don't necessarily equate residency (or even citizenship) with nationality, and have tended to resist full assimilation even if their homes, businesses and other activities are U.S.-based
As with many in the Diaspora, Green very much hears and feels the tug of home, but says the expected "welcome" is still not in evidence the way Jamaican Government officials (of both parties) have made it out to be. "I find that there's still too much a sense of resentment - a sense of 'well, we stayed and built, so who are you?' "
Notwithstanding, she remains passionately committed to Jamaica and securing greater development opportunities forth e country and, importantly, applying many of the developmental lessons gained in working in a multi-cultural metropolitan setting to the Jamaican setting, in way that transcends cheap partisan gamesmanship. "There are issues here that can readily be addressed with the will t change, that is to say, resources exist - we just have to start thinking differently in order to access them and apply them.
But soon enough , she will have to be " back in the USA" [to paraphrase the Beatles' favourite] and already, its time to focus on yet another major vote - the 2020 elections in which, apart from Trump, Florida Senator Marco Rubio - so controversial in the wake of the Parkland high school shooting - will be challenged, among others. Green has her own ideas about who will be the Democrats' standard-bearer for the Presidential contest. "I believe we'll see a time like in the mid-2000s, when Barack Obama emerged almost out of nowhere and went on to capture the imagination of the country," she says. I think someone apart from the current favoured names will come forward." Whoever does emerge, Green will have a hand in directing through her interactions as Democratic Diversity Chair and the woman who once hankered after a Prime ministerial position in Jamaica may yet have a hand in America's next choice for President.
St. Hugh is reputed to have been befriended - and viciously protected - by a swan while at Lincoln. An image of that creature, and the word "Fidelitas" - 'loyalty' of 'allegiance' grace the school crest of St Hugh's. green, through her loyalty to the cause of both Jamaicans and other immigrant groups in the rapidly-evolving U.S. is poised to soar to even greater heights - like an eagle.
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