Iwuoha with Lieutenant Governor of Maryland Boyd Kevin Rutherford
Sanitary Commission (WSSC), Charles County, Maryland, the Cory of Baltimore, Maryland and the LDBE by the Metropolitan
Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) plus recognition by the Mayor of Baltimore, Iwuoha has every reason to say his American dream indeed has been one met with great expectations. His high-profile clients in the Maryland administration network extend to the Ports, Aviation, Transit, State Highway, Departments of General Services, Housing and Community Development, Housing Authority of Baltimore City, City of Baltimore Department of Public Works, Prince George Department of Public Works and Education, et al.
That young man who left the shores of his country with a suite luggage he calls a portmanteau way back in the early 1980s has grown to be so big in corporate America that he has become a critical voice for the African American experience, so much so he serves in many capacities of influence outside his core business in civil engineering.
Expectedly this life changing experience did not come with a bed of roses. It had thorns and hills that needed to be dismantled. Like the alchemist seeking to transmute a base metal into a noble one such as gold, he was cooked in the furnace of human experience, with an admixture of ingots as the fire roasted and transformed him to a distinguished citizen. In everyday language, he met people along the way, angels sent to take him to the next level. These experiences and challenges shape the persona in him.
Iwuoha’s career in the engineering and construction sector kick started with what in his professional language he calls horizontal design and construction of roads, bridges, culverts, sediment and erosion controls, mass site grading, drainage and pavements services. According to him: “during this period of my career, I was involved in infrastructure assessment, design build, scheduling, constructability review, project management and project inspection.” More importantly Iwuoha’s early apprenticeship working with Fortune 500 companies actually prepared him to tread the road less travelled throwing him up to greater heights of accomplishment.
Vice President of the Nigeria Children Foundation and co-founder of Buffalo Area Engineering Awareness for the Minorities (BEAM), Iwuoha remembers his parents Geoffrey Uwalaka and Jessie Iwuoha of Umueze Ogwa in Mbaitoli LGA, Imo State with passion and nostalgia. Being the first son in a family of seven children imposed on him early in the day a sense of responsibility and duty. His father was a civil servant who believed in education and hard work, admonishing his children always to be hard working since it is the passport to success among other things.
He also ensured he gave them good education within his reach ensuring each of them became a university graduate as the minimum passport to playing active roles in society. An old boy of Aboh Mbaise Secondary School in Imo State Nigeria, Iwuoha left his country in 1981 for the US to fulfill his American dream, earning a degree in Civil Engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1986.
That journey that began 37 years ago has borne positive results of a protean dimension, what Iwuoha says is possible with a guiding principle which is that it is not what you have achieved in life but what you do with the achievement and the impact on the rest of humanity that matters. This guiding principle has led