Dr. Sandy Harrigan-Underhill has spent thirty-five years in education in these Virgin Islands. Not commenting on it. Inside it. As a teacher, a department head, an assistant principal, a principal, a director of the first teacher training and preparation institution, and now as the Campus Director of the country’s first medical school.

She ran Elmore Stoutt High School for five years. ESHS enrolls more than seventy percent of all CSEC candidates in the country. She knows these students by name, by story, by what it took to get each of them through the door. The morning after Hurricane Irma destroyed the school building, she walked onto campus before sunrise and built a plan. In nine days, five hundred students were back in temporary classrooms. Three weeks later, the remaining nine hundred followed.

In the two years that followed, with no building and severely limited resources, the Virgin Islands placed first in CSEC results in the region. First time ever. Two years in a row.

She has watched three generations of young Virgin Islanders ask the same questions with no certain answer. She is running because thirty-five years of watching is not the same as thirty-five years of accepting.