Grenadian Student Excels With PETNA Scholarship

PETNA Foundation scholarship changes student’s life

By Lincoln DePradine

Keziah Gibbs

For more than four decades, technology entrepreneur and successful international business leader, Nicholas Earle Brathwaite, has been associated with McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. In this season of university and college graduation, he has made one McMaster student, Keziah Gibbs, a happy person.

Brathwaite and his wife Janice, in 2007, established the PETNA Foundation, through which they offer scholarships to young people to study at McMaster University.

The Foundation formalized and expanded their longstanding commitment to philanthropy.

Gibbs graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree, with first class honours; and she and her parents, Dwight and Estelle Gibbs, are thankful to the Brathwaites and the PETNA Foundation for what they describe as the “investment’’ in education.

Nicholas and Janice Brathwaite

“I cannot thank Mr and Mrs Brathwaite and the PETNA Foundation enough for investing in me,’’ said Gibbs, who is from the Parish of St Andrew on Grenada’s east coast.

“PETNA”, an acronym based on Nicholas Brathwaite’s parents’ initials, aims to bring “financial resources and intellectual capital to projects focused on youth, education and community development’’.

“I am just a conduit of God’s blessings. I believe we are blessed so that, through us, God can bless others,’’ Brathwaite said in a comment to The Caribbean Camera.

Brathwaite, who attended high school at Presentation Brothers’ College in Grenada, where his late father served as prime minister from 1990 to 1995, holds an M.Sc. in chemistry from the University of Waterloo.

He earned his first degree from McMaster University, graduating from the department of chemistry in 1982.

As an entrepreneur, Brathwaite was a founding-member of nCHIP—a company that specialized in developing an industry-leading, multi-chip module assembly process. He was named chief technology officer when nCHIP was bought in 1995 by Silicon Valley-based Flextronics.

Under Brathwaite’s leadership, Flextronics’ revenue grew from $150 million to more than $20 billion. He retired from the company to become a founding-partner Riverwood Capital, a private equity firm.

The scholarship award to McMaster covers payment of tuition, housing, meals, books and even travel, including students’ returning home to the Caribbean on vacation.

“Initially, this scholarship was just for Grenadians,’’ said Brathwaite, who received an honourary doctorate from McMaster University in 2018 for a lifetime of professional success and public service.

According to Estelle Gibbs, Keziah’s mother, “saying thanks once could never be enough; so, we continue to say thanks to Mr Braithwaite and the PETNA Foundation for the scholarship. Your contributions played a vital role in our daughter’s academic journey’’.

The award to study at McMaster is just one of a number of scholarships financed by the PETNA Foundation “to enable outstanding young students to pursue higher education and to set them on a path toward a successful career and future’’.

The hope, say the Brathwaites and the board of the Foundation, is that the scholarships will “fuel young people’s dreams, expand their horizons, and support their academic and personal development. Upon graduation, these young scholars will have gained a strong foundation from which to serve as leaders, innovators and agents of change in their communities’’.

Further information on the scholarships and other programs of the PETNA Foundation is available at https://www.petna-foundation.org/

https://thecaribbeancamera.com/petna-foundation-scholarship-mcmaster-grenadian-success/