In 1990, the Children’s Defense Fund began coordinating Beat the Odds ® events to celebrate the positive potential of young people. Too often we hear about teenagers getting into trouble, dropping out of school, becoming involved with drugs or crime or gangs, or becoming parents too soon. But we rarely stop to recognize the many young people who excel despite facing such challenges as poverty, violence, homelessness, family breakup, or substance abuse.  Communities across the country now hold Beat the Odds ® events to celebrate local students who’ve overcome these kinds of hurdles, and year after year, they have honored dozens of remarkable and inspiring young people.  Dr. Rhondee Benjamin-Johnson is just one of the first generation of our extraordinary Beat the Odds® alumni.  In 1992, when she won her award, she was a high school student with tremendous promise.  She’s now a graduate of Spelman College and Harvard Medical School, and part of a new generation of women leaders.  In June, she was featured on a panel on young women’s perspectives on health, education, and leadership at the Global Women’s Action Network for Children Conference in Jordan held at the Dead Sea Conference Center under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah.

In her speech after winning the Beat the Odds® award, Dr. Benjamin-Johnson described the murder of her aunt when she was a child and the effect this had on the entire family.  After her parents separated, she also assumed a lot of the responsibility for her family’s care.  Through it all, she excelled in high school as a National Merit Commended Scholar and Senior Class President, volunteered at the Washington Hospital Center and Howard University's Therapeutic Childlife Center, and participated in medical apprenticeships.  As she said at the Global Women’s Action Network for Children Conference in Jordan, “I'm a doctor who’s very concerned about underserved communities in the United States, and I think that grew out of my own personal experience with violence and tragedy in my family, which exposed my entire family to the effects of poverty . . . I felt the personal experience of poverty and what it means to live in an underserved community, and then I was able to connect that to what's happening to people in different communities, and how we can actually make choices.”

Dr. Benjamin-Johnson has definitely made positive choices in her own life.  At Spelman she received a Bachelor's of Science in chemistry with a minor in Women's Studies.  In addition to her medical degree from Harvard, she holds a master's degree in anthropology and development from the London School of Economics.  Her work is already helping give other women the opportunity to make positive choices too and to make sure governments are making the right choices to help underserved communities, especially girls and women. 

A grant allowed her to pursue a year-long research project on women scientists in India and Kenya, and her master's thesis focused on the connection between family planning programs and cultural ideas about women’s bodies among Indian and Japanese women.  Right now, Dr. Benjamin-Johnson is completing her medical residency in internal medicine in Boston, and her special interests are domestic and international HIV care, substance abuse, and the medical needs of prison inmates, especially incarcerated women.

As she explained at the conference, “In residency, one of the things I've been concerned about is HIV care and the care of incarcerated women.  And I think for me one of the things that I wanted to bring out . . . is the intersection between poverty and lack of economic opportunity and education, and its impact on health.”  Dr. Benjamin-Johnson went on to explain that as a physician she’s very concerned about trends like the number of poor women who experience factors like substance abuse and sexual abuse that leave them at risk for HIV, and who may not know how to protect their health or receive proper treatment—especially if they are also in prison.  Her important work is making a difference.

I am so proud of this impressive young leader who beat the odds.  She is a reminder that when young people persevere and hold on to their dreams and goals, they can go on to reach remarkable heights—no matter what obstacles seem to stand in their way.