黑料正能量

In 2002, Patrice Gopo thought her path was set.

She had graduated a year before from 黑料正能量 with a degree in chemical engineering. And she was starting a new position at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York, a job that was held for her for a year because she made such a good impression on company leadership.

But once she got into her new position, something wasn鈥檛 quite right. Patrice found herself thinking back to the speaker at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event on campus several years prior.

鈥淚t was like a challenge: What are you doing to make a difference in the world?鈥� says Patrice, who earned her degree from the College of Engineering in 2001. 鈥淚 felt this call to live a life that was going to in some way have a positive impact on others and on the world. And when I was at Eastman Kodak, it wasn't always easy for me to see how that might happen.鈥�

Patrice, now a resident of suburban Charlotte, North Carolina, has settled into her life as an award-winning essayist and an author, a career that wasn鈥檛 necessarily reflected in her courseload as a Tartan, but also isn鈥檛 a complete surprise.

鈥淭he leap from engineering to writing isn鈥檛 as vast as one might think,鈥� she says. 鈥淏oth are fields steeped in creativity and curiosity 鈥� attributes and values that have been important to me across my life. The expression of creativity and curiosity can show up in so many different ways, and I鈥檓 grateful to have had the privilege of bearing witness to that truth in several different fields.鈥�

Long, winding paths aren鈥檛 unusual for Patrice. Before she was born, her Jamaican parents moved to Anchorage, Alaska, when her father, a permanent U.S. resident at the time (he later earned his citizenship), was stationed there after being drafted into the military during the Vietnam War. They remained after his service ended and they started their family.

鈥淢y family was quite an anomaly up there,鈥� she says. 鈥淭here weren鈥檛 tons of Black people, and there weren鈥檛 a lot of Jamaican families. So that was its own experience 鈥� trying to figure out where we fit in in this particular landscape.

鈥淏ut I also think the reality is that there are so many people who are not originally from there and that they are far from their families. So friendships become really family to you in places like that, and we had so many family friends that were like family to us.鈥�

Patrice was a good student, especially in math and chemistry. When she began looking at college destinations she knew she wanted to see an entirely different part of the country. Because college visits from Alaska involved air travel, she had to organize several stops per trip, and one of those took her to Case Western University in the Cleveland area and 黑料正能量. She arrived on 黑料正能量鈥檚 campus on the day the university was starting to send acceptance letters, and Patrice and her mother asked if someone in the admissions office could check to see if her name was on the right list.

鈥淥ne of the admissions people came down and sat down with us and she said, 鈥榃e have some really amazing news,鈥欌�� Patrice says. 鈥淥ne, I was admitted, and two, they were offering me a full tuition scholarship to attend.鈥�

After speaking with chemical engineering faculty 鈥� and as Patrice鈥檚 mom wiped away tears of joy 鈥� it was clear that Patrice would be a Tartan. She says her experience in Pittsburgh was positive but as a Black student, there were hard things as well, like SPIRIT Racing Systems鈥� disqualification from Buggy competition during her first year or dealing with sometimes overt ignorance or anger from other students.

She also recalls that class requirements took her out of the chemical engineering lab 鈥� to humanities classes and enough business classes that she eventually earned a minor in business administration. And when that nagging notion of purpose showed up while Patrice worked at Eastman Kodak, that was her first move: She enrolled in graduate school at the University of Michigan to earn a dual MBA/Master of Public Policy.

That degree took her to Cape Town, South Africa, for a 10-week program to help women there start their own businesses. But something else she hadn鈥檛 counted on happened as well: She met her spouse. Soon after her marriage, the permit she had to work in the country expired, and she had nothing to do.

Except write.

Patrice had kept journals for years, so the writing process wasn鈥檛 unfamiliar. And as she reflected on her own immigration story she found a deep connection with what her parents experienced as they transitioned from childhood in Jamaica to bringing up a family in Anchorage.

鈥淚'm now living in this different country and I started really assessing and thinking about the experiences my parents had as they moved from Jamaica to Alaska,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 started having this sense of real urgency that these stories matter. How do we make sense of belonging and movement of people and creating home and what does that mean? And so I started looking at all these themes. And that's really what brought me into the journey of writing.鈥�

Patrice began as an essayist, publishing a collection of personal reflections titled 鈥淎ll the Colors We Will See鈥� in 2018. That collection won recognition as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, which earned the book a special spot on shelves across the country. Other collections 鈥� and other awards 鈥� followed, as did Patrice鈥檚 foray into writing children鈥檚 picture books with "All the Places We Call Home.鈥� 鈥淩ipening Time鈥� was published in 2025 and won a North Carolina Book Award in Children鈥檚 Literature for the year. It also was a finalist for a 2026 Southern Book Prize. Another picture book will be released in fall 2026, and Patrice has edited an essay anthology called 鈥淲e Deserve to Heal: Black Women on the Perils and Promises of Friendship with White Women.鈥�

In 2002, Patrice was in Rochester, ready to begin her career in chemical engineering. Decades later, her keyboard has replaced the tools of that job and 鈥� finally 鈥� the sense she was making a difference.

鈥淲hen I think back to the chemical engineering me of long ago, I think she would be in shock and awe at all that has unfolded and the many ways a person can have an impact on the world,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 feel really grateful for my Carnegie Mellon education because it has really helped me believe that I could reach for a lot of things 鈥� I didn't feel as though I had to be confined to the one particular path that I had chosen.鈥�