Damian Williams - Contributed

It's refreshing to hear of persons with Jamaican heritage doing well in other parts of the world. Andre Damian Williams is one of those persons.

His academic achievements are outstanding and now he is all set to pursue clerkships with the highest courts in the United States.

Jamaican-born parents

Hailing from Decatur, Atlanta, Williams is the son of Jamaican-born parents Andre Williams Sr. and Monica Williams (née Smith). His father is a well-known obstetrician and gynaecologist; his mother is the owner and director of Decatur's Alpha Academy Day Care. Both of them are high achievers themselves, a trait they evidently passed down to their son.

What sort of successes have Andre Jr. enjoyed?

Throughout his academic years, he was always at the top of his class. This began at Woodward Academy in College Park, where he had numerous roles (including being class president in 10th and 11th grade, and a Habitat for Humanity coordinator) and from which he graduated in 1998, being awarded the Ron Brown Scholarship, which is given to the highest-achieving African-American high school students in the country. From there, he attended Harvard University, where during his junior year he did economic development research for Spain's University of Madrid, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa (the oldest academic honour society in the nation)and graduated with an economics degree in 2002. In that same year, he was named the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholar, which allowed him to enrol at Cambridge University in England.

Achieved his masters

After graduating from Cambridge University with a Master of Philosophy in international relations, Williams worked for a while in the political field, including working with the Council on African American Affairs in Washington, D.C. Then in 2004, Williams went back to school yet again, where he was awarded the Soros Fellowship for New Americans and became a JD candidate at Yale Law School.

At Yale, he was an editor of the Yale Law journal and the Yale Law and Policy Review. He graduated from Yale on May 28, 2007, being one of four students nationwide to be awarded a clerkship with Judge Merrick Garland of the United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit. Very recently, too, Williams was awarded a U.S. Supreme Court Clerkship that will begin in 2008 following his current clerkship with Judge Garland.