Trinida­di­an-born en­to­mol­o­gist Dr Michelle Samuel-Foo nev­er had all her school books and had to study by the light of a can­dle when­ev­er there was a pow­er out­age at her home in Bak­er Trace, Guaico. Still, she had a fire in­side that would not go out.

At 44, and af­ter just two years of be­ing an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor at Al­aba­ma State Uni­ver­si­ty (ASU), Samuel-Foo has been elect­ed pres­i­dent of the South­east­ern En­to­mo­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of Amer­i­ca; be­com­ing the first black woman to do so. On No­vem­ber 11, she will be­come the first black fe­male fea­ture speak­er of the En­to­mo­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of Amer­i­ca (ESA) at its Founders’ Memo­r­i­al Lec­ture. There, she will be award­ed the ESA Founders’ Memo­r­i­al Award for her out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the study of in­sects and how they af­fect crops and hu­mans.

Her win­ning for­mu­la for suc­cess is con­sis­tent hard work, mak­ing good first im­pres­sions and be­ing un­afraid to con­nect with oth­ers, she told Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone from her Mont­gomery, Al­aba­ma, home re­cent­ly.

“My dad re­al­ly be­lieved that I could do any­thing. He saw how hard I worked and en­cour­aged me. Some­times I would study by can­dle­light when the elec­tric­i­ty went. I’d be do­ing home­work with­out the text. My dad just re­al­ly be­lieved that I could be some­thing. And I guess I al­ways car­ried his be­lief in me,” she added.

Re­search in in­te­grat­ed pest man­age­ment, pes­ti­cide reg­u­la­tions and legal­ly cul­ti­vat­ed hemp form part of Samuel-Foo’s ex­per­tise. The gift­ed en­to­mol­o­gist has start­ed a teach­ing gar­den at her cam­pus where her un­der­grad stu­dents learn how to de­vel­op sus­tain­able crops in an ur­ban set­ting. She has al­so giv­en ex­pert tes­ti­mo­ny be­fore the US House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on means of com­bat­ing Asian gi­ant hor­nets, a dan­ger­ous threat to hon­ey­bees which are vi­tal to the pol­li­na­tion of crops. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with two oth­er uni­ver­si­ties in Al­aba­ma, Samuel-Foo said she has al­so ap­plied to tech gi­ant, Ap­ple Inc, for a US$ 20 mil­lion grant re­gard­ing the use of hemp to make plas­tic prod­ucts.

Hail­ing the Amer­i­can men­tors and pro­fes­sors who lined her road to achieve­ment, Samuel-Foo cred­it­ed her for­ma­tive years in Trinidad with shap­ing her path.

The fourth of sev­en chil­dren, the San­gre Grande na­tive re­flect­ed on her par­ents’ strug­gle to pro­vide for their fam­i­ly. Her fa­ther, Win­ston Samuel, who dropped out of school in Stan­dard 3, bal­anced work­ing bare­foot­ed at a sawmill in Grande with cul­ti­vat­ing crops on their small piece of land, she re­called. Her moth­er, Rad­i­ca Samuel, who had a sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion, helped her hus­band and chil­dren grow pro­duce which they sold at the Ari­ma mar­ket on Sat­ur­days.

“Our sum­mers weren’t about go­ing abroad. This was the time for us to make some ex­tra mon­ey, work­ing the land. There was this one sum­mer when my dad said: we’re go­ing to have a spe­cial treat to­day; a truck is com­ing by. And in my mind I’m think­ing there’s go­ing to be some kind of ride in­volved. That was not the case; the van ac­tu­al­ly had a big load of cow ma­nure that wasn’t ful­ly cured, so you could imag­ine the smell. It was our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to take the ma­nure in bags or buck­ets and put it on the base of cit­rus trees we were grow­ing.”

De­scrib­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence as her first re­al in­tro­duc­tion to agri­cul­ture and en­to­mol­o­gy, Samuel-Foo said while the oth­ers found it to be off-putting, she was fas­ci­nat­ed by the process and the var­i­ous in­sects in­hab­it­ing the soil and crops.

At her al­ma mater, North East­ern Col­lege, she nev­er had all her text­books and would have to walk to her friend’s house to do home­work.

“It forced me to work re­al­ly hard and per­se­vere, and though I didn’t know at the time, that was a skill set that proved very fruit­ful for me through­out my uni­ver­si­ty ca­reer,” she said.

With sheer grit, Samuel-Foo com­plet­ed A’ Lev­els in Bi­ol­o­gy, Chem­istry and Maths, aid­ed by Ms Bren­da Chaumette, her for­mer Eng­lish teacher, and Mrs An­nette Brizan, her for­mer prin­ci­pal, who both took a keen in­ter­est in her aca­d­e­m­ic de­vel­op­ment.

It was while work­ing as a bank teller at Re­pub­lic Bank in Tu­na­puna two years lat­er, that co-work­er, Ja­cynth Blandin, en­cour­aged her to take the SATs as a means of fur­ther­ing her ed­u­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States. Again, prompt­ed by Blandin, she at­tend­ed a US Col­lege Fair in Port-of-Spain and made sure to in­tro­duce her­self to ad­mis­sions coun­sel­lors. Her sol­id SAT scores and ami­able per­son­al­i­ty would win her a schol­ar­ship at Brew­ton-Park­er Col­lege, Mount Ver­non, Geor­gia.

Al­though the small town of Mount Ver­non turned out to be a far cry from the big, bright lights of New York she had imag­ined, Samuel-Foo ap­pre­ci­at­ed the qui­et, 2,500-stu­dent uni­ver­si­ty, tak­ing every ex­tra course and class avail­able. She end­ed up com­plet­ing her Bach­e­lor of Arts in Bi­ol­o­gy de­gree in two-and-a-half years rather than in the usu­al four, sum­ma cum laude, no less.

Un­sure of her next move, the de­part­ment chair at Brew­ton-Park­er, who had recog­nised her aca­d­e­m­ic prowess, en­cour­aged her to do post-grad­u­ate work, a con­cept alien to her at the time.

“Look­ing back, I re­alise that many peo­ple were just look­ing out for me. I didn’t come from mon­ey, I didn’t come from means. It was just pure hard work and hav­ing the right at­ti­tude,” Samuel-Foo said.

This cre­do proved true again as she land­ed a grad­u­ate as­sist­ant­ship (tu­ition, room and board as pay­ment for grad­u­ate work) to pur­sue her Mas­ters and PhD at one of the US’ fore­most re­search in­sti­tu­tions, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia (UGA). There, the daugh­ter of an East In­di­an moth­er and an Afro-Trinida­di­an fa­ther was un­daunt­ed by be­ing one of on­ly two fe­males of colour in the uni­ver­si­ty’s en­to­mol­o­gy de­part­ment.

“I was able to make friends re­gard­less of race. To me, every­body is a po­ten­tial friend. My hum­ble be­gin­nings helped me re­alise that every­one mat­ters and you treat every­one with re­spect,” she ex­plained.

Draw­ing on mem­o­ries of her moth­er’s tac­tics for con­trol­ling pests on their crops back home, she nur­tured a pas­sion for tax­on­o­my; agron­o­my; en­to­mol­o­gy and pest man­age­ment.

Her be­lief in be­ing op­ti­mistic, dili­gent and mem­o­rable is one she has tried to in­stil in not on­ly her stu­dents but in her sons, Yohan, 17, Oliv­er, 14 and Noah, ten. At home, the boys read­i­ly cap­i­talise on their moth­er’s skills in their ver­ti­cal gar­den con­sist­ing of buck­ets on trel­lis­es (struc­ture for climb­ing plants) where they grow toma­toes and cu­cum­bers.

She makes sure to ed­u­cate her sons about their Trin­bag­on­ian her­itage, as well and of­ten lets them read her child­hood jour­nal on her strug­gles to suc­cess. Trinida­di­ans have a rep­u­ta­tion for achiev­ing aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence, she told Guardian Me­dia. She hopes to in­spire many to keep it that way.

Q&A with Samuel-Foo

Gillian Cal­iste talks fur­ther with trail­blaz­er in en­to­mol­o­gy, Dr Michelle Samuel-Foo about her work and her pas­times.

Tell me about some of your work con­cern­ing hemp.

Hemp is very sim­i­lar to mar­i­jua­na. The main dif­fer­ence is the delta tetrahy­dro­cannabi­nol con­tent…The hemp plant is very ver­sa­tile. You can use hemp to make plas­tics. We’ve sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al to Ap­ple Inc for that type of re­search. A lot of the work that we’re look­ing at is the in­sect pro­file that af­fects this crop. As it’s a brand new com­mod­i­ty, we don’t know very much in terms of pest man­age­ment and on­ly a few pes­ti­cides are cur­rent­ly avail­able to grow­ers. Some peo­ple are brew­ing this com­mod­i­ty (hemp) as tea, they’re ex­tract­ing the oils to use as tinc­tures, even as ed­i­bles, so you have to be very care­ful spray­ing with con­ven­tion­al ma­te­ri­als be­cause of hu­man safe­ty.

Any re­search or break­throughs re­gard­ing Asian mur­der hor­nets?

The Asian mur­der hor­nets of­fer a first-hand view in­to in­va­sive species and how they can dec­i­mate na­tive species and habi­tats. Back in June of this year, I ac­tu­al­ly tes­ti­fied be­fore the US House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives as an ex­pert wit­ness on the Asian gi­ant hor­net. This is an in­va­sive in­sect that is try­ing to get domi­ciled in Wash­ing­ton State. They just found the first live nest a cou­ple of weeks ago. It presents a very dif­fer­ent pest pro­file; it does not af­fect in­dus­tri­al hemp, the crop that I’m work­ing on now.

How do you jug­gle all of your achieve­ments with moth­er­hood?

I ac­tu­al­ly had Yohan when I was a Mas­ters stu­dent, I had Oliv­er as a PhD stu­dent and Noah when I had my first job at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da as a fac­ul­ty mem­ber. I’ll ad­mit that it’s been chal­leng­ing, but as a par­ent you want to en­sure that you’re set­ting the ex­am­ple for your chil­dren. When they see that their mum is re­ceiv­ing these ac­co­lades, I want them to know that it’s not some­thing that’s be­ing hand­ed to me; I’m be­ing recog­nised for my eth­ic of hard work. They see me pulling the long days and nights, but still com­ing home and cook­ing too.

What about hob­bies, what do you do to un­wind?

I ab­solute­ly love Car­ni­val! I was in Trinidad for Car­ni­val this year and I was so glad. I’m a late bloomer in terms of Car­ni­val. It wasn’t un­til I fin­ished my ed­u­ca­tion that I par­tic­i­pat­ed with a friend in 2014 and now I just love it. And I’m a fit­ness en­thu­si­ast. I work out five days a week, do­ing Cross­Fit and weights. Gym ther­a­py is how I start the day at 4:30 every morn­ing.