From birth to her sixteenth year of life, Rowena lived in the lush tropical land of Guyana nestled on the East coast of South America. In 1998, Rowena and her family left Guyana for Gilbert, Arizona in efforts to provide their daughter with all of the educational opportunities that the United States had to offer. Graduating in the top 25 percent of her high school class, she gained entry to the University of Arizona in the year, 2000. At the University of Arizona (UA), she majored in Molecular and Cellular Biology while being a Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) scholar and actively involved in the UA club, African Americans in Life Sciences (AALS).  In 2004, she was admitted to the University of Arizona’s doctoral program in Medical Pharmacology. As a first year Ph.D. student she was selected to be a N.I.H. Initiatives to Minority Student Development (IMSD) scholar. Currently, in the fourth year of her doctoral program, both academically and socially, she continues to leave her mark, as she is a More Graduate Education at Mountain States Alliance scholar, immediate past president of Sisters of Unity and has presented her Asthma research at several National meetings. Striving to connect individuals with a common interest, Rowena along with her peers has instituted the first Black Graduate Student Association on the University of Arizona’s campus. She also currently sits on the executive board of the National Black Graduate Students Association (NBGSA) as Western Regional Representative and a member of the promotions committee for the Arizona Women’s Conference. With her passion to unite the black community, she seeks to creatively accomplish this task through poetry as she promotes spoken word events around Tucson through her website, Tucson Premiere Open Mic. She is also the recipient of the 2007 Black Poet Ventures inspiration award “for the love of black history” poetry contest.