How to build a dream
Program & mom lead son to construct school near Bx. home
Engineer Joshua Ojo’s latest construction project rises five subway stops from his childhood Bronx apartment — and far closer to his heart.
The 24-year-old Ojo, the son of a single-parent Nigerian immigrant, is working hard in his home borough to erect a new middle school for the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), where his dreams of a future in engineering were nurtured as young student.
“Honestly, it’s one of the best feelings in the world,” Ojo told the Daily News. “Programs like this, opportunities like this, are really, really what KIPP sought to do: Building leaders and individuals to positively impact their own communities. Power is knowledge.”
Ojo, who grew up in Highbridge, is part of the Suffolk Construction team building one of two new schools in the Bronx for the non-profit program.
His success, as Ojo is quick to acknowledge, was a family affair. His mother and older sister Cordelia were both role models and cheerleaders for education and advancement throughout his childhood. And Cordelia, eight years older than Joshua, preceded him as a KIPP student while mom returned to school and became a nurse.
“Those two paved the way and instilled how important education was to me,” he said. “The values at home were working hard, staying humble, and not only pursuing certain opportunities for yourself but looking out for the individual next to you.”
Ojo, in a touching letter detailing how much the opportunity to come full circle on construction of a new KIPP campus would mean to him, recalled the maternal mantras of his childhood: “You gotta read, baby, read” and “work hard, be nice.”
His words were sent along by Suffolk executives as part of their proposal to land the KIPP contract.
“It was ingrained in me to seek education and work hard, so later in life I wouldn’t have to struggle,” said Ojo on a break from erecting steel and eventually pouring concrete at the coming school building.
The non-profit KIPP program, founded in 1994, currently operates 270 schools in 20 states plus the District of Columbia, with a student body comprised of 95% Black or Latino kids. KIPP also pairs with more than 90 universities and colleges to insure its students receive diplomas and employment.
Suffolk Vice President of Operations Joseph Whelan said the company jumped at the chance to get a KIPP alum involved in this project.
“This is not just building to finish a project,” he said. “Josh gets to leave his mark on something that is very special to him and his community. That experience is very rare in our industry.”
Jane Martinez Dowling, KIPP’s Chief of External Affairs, recalled Ojo as wise beyond his years and the beneficiary of strong support and encouragement at home.
KIPP now runs 18 schools with more than 7,000 kids citywide, she said.
Ojo’s interest in engineering was sparked by a KIPP field trip visit to a New York architecture firm. And there were other benefits to attending the school: As a young student, Ojo performed with Grammy-winner John Legend at a convention hosted by the group Teach For America.
“On the same stage, a bunch of 10-yearolds,” he recalled. “Definitely an experience not everyone can say they had.”
Ojo views his current project as somehow preordained, a destiny more than a destination.
“It’s no accident, given the values installed in my life, that I found myself in this field,” he said. “We can all recall the best memories we ever had, and it ties you back to some structure.”
The young engineer intends to ensure this hometown construction job is just the first of many in the dream-come-true career ahead.
“I hope to be in this industry, with a whole slew of projects like this under my belt and being a leader,” he said.