Kenrick — A Conversation with Kenrick Mark Coleman Features Carlos Zetina

The Kenrick Mark Coleman Foundation

Kenrick — A Conversation with Kenrick Mark Coleman Features Carlos Zetina

1. Tell us a little about yourself.

I was born in Belize city but grew up in the tight-knit community of Corozal town. My dad worked at WASA (now BWS) and my mom was a primary school teacher. I attended St. Francis Xavier Primary School, Corozal Community College and Corozal Junior College.

I moved to Puebla, Mexico for my undergraduate degree in Applied Mathematics and Computers. This was the opportunity that opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities that unfortunately were not even on my radar while living in Belize. Upon completing my Bachelor’s degree, I immediately enrolled to obtain a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering at the same university and did a research visit in Barcelona, Spain.

(The summer) before going to Barcelona, I interned at the Environment, Health, and Safety department of the Belize Natural Energy Limited. There I met many great people and witnessed first-hand outstanding Belizean talent. I was very much looking forward to working there full-time after completing my Master’s degree. Unfortunately, this didn’t pan out and I was unable to find employment back in Belize. However, I was offered an associate position at a banking consulting firm in Mexico. I worked there for over 2 years before I was offered another scholarship to do my Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

I enjoy doing research, discovering new things and writing scientific papers to divulge the results so that other people may be able to use them. To be able to keep doing this for a while, I applied for post-doctoral fellowships and was lucky to be hired at the Canada Excellence Research Chair for Data Science for Real Time Decision Making. After a year as a post-doc, I was drawn to a new opportunity that combined two things I really enjoyed: consulting and data science. This brings me to where I am today as a Senior Data Scientist of an AI consulting firm named Ivado Labs.

I’ve always been an eclectic and indecisive person. As a child, depending on the day you’d ask me, I visualized myself as a fireman, policeman, lawyer, musician, or politician. Mind you, I am neither of these today although I still play music (the guitar, keyboard, and ukulele). To add fuel to the fire, I’m a very curious person and am prone to going down rabbit holes to learn more and more on seemingly unrelated topics. As a result, when asked about my strategy to get where I am, I honestly have no response except “following my latest obsession and working hard to master it”.

2. You recently graduated with a PhD in Industrial Engineering from Concordia University. What do you believe is important in this your role?

My Ph.D. research was specifically in the field of operations research where mathematical models are developed and solved to guide decision makers toward making the best choices. The field had its origins in World War II where the allies were using this methodology to gain an edge in the fight against the Nazis. Nowadays it is embedded in many things we see today such as the route google maps suggests from point A to B, the scheduling of the NBA games we see, and to give an example relevant to the global pandemic, it’s even used to allocate medical equipment used for COVID tests.

Working in this field has given me the skills to develop quantitative and technological tools that help companies, organizations, and even governments make the best use of limited resources. I believe this has the potential for large impact not only in Belize but throughout the world.

3. Tell us more about your academic life at this University? How did you receive the scholarship? Why did you choose this particular University? When did you commence studies? What subject areas are focused on? What’s your relationship like with fellow students?

While doing my Master’s degree in Mexico, I worked on a research project with two professors from the industrial engineering department, Prof. Juan Diaz and Prof. Dolores Luna. Prof. Diaz was one of my Ph.D. advisors’ Master’s thesis advisor so when I decided I was now ready to pursue a Ph.D., Prof. Diaz recommended me to Prof. Ivan Contreras who was then a faculty member at Concordia University. Prof. Contreras invited Prof. Jean-François Cordeau to co-advise me and I was lucky that he also accepted.

So, I filed the admissions paperwork to Concordia university while I was still working full time as a senior associate at a consulting firm. Around March 2014, I got the news that not only had I been accepted into the program, but that I had a full scholarship. Acceptance letter in hand, I filed all the corresponding student visa paperwork to come to Canada. On August 21st 2014, I arrived in Montreal to start my four-year Ph.D. journey.

The title of my Ph.D. thesis is Network design under uncertainty and demand elasticity. In it, my supervisors and I developed specialized algorithms (series of instructions that can be given to a computer) to solve the problem of designing and operating a network with lowest possible cost while having only partial information of its requirements. This situation arises in applications such as the building of highways and railways, the location of radio towers to transmit information signals, the acquisition of flight routes by an airline, and the hiring of third-party logistics suppliers for the delivery of goods.

The topic of my Ph.D. thesis was completely different from anything I had worked on. Both my master’s and undergraduate work had mostly been on abstract mathematical structures, however, my Ph.D. was now focused on solution methods to real problems. I’ve never been someone to shy away from the unknown and since the topic itself seemed very interesting, I jumped on board and began this journey of discovery.

Along with doing research, some friends and I also started a couple of student-led associations. The first was a local student chapter of the international organization for our field (operations research). The goal was to facilitate knowledge sharing among those of us working on this topic. We would organize workshops, conferences, and social activities to allow for people to exchange ideas while creating new friendships. The second association we created was a committee that organized an annual outreach event for high school students to introduce them to our field. The event was in the form of a competition in which they would work in teams to solve problems related to our field such as deciding the shortest route a snow-plow truck would take to clean all the streets of a city or how to optimally plan a rock band tour. These two associations had a large impact for the community and both associations received international recognition. Most importantly, it was a great way to make life-long friends with whom we share memories of late nights, stressful moments, and bursts of laughter. Building and running these associations would get stressful at times, but at the end of it all, we ended up becoming closer friends and expanding our social circle beyond the university campus.

4. Describe your transformation process from little Belize to Mexico, and then Canada?.

When going from Belize to Mexico, the first big change was the language. Don’t get me wrong, I did speak Spanish at home in Corozal, but it is very different from the Spanish spoken in Puebla, the city where I would do my Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. At the beginning, my friends and I had a hard time understanding each other. Eventually, I got the hang of the “Mexican” Spanish and was able to speak and understand it. I’m now completely fluent in “Mexican” Spanish and in fact, I speak it at home with my partner who also has a hard time understanding the Spanish I speak with my family.

This whole process has taught me how to be linguistically flexible. When talking to family back home, I speak the Spanish from back home, when speaking to friends from back home I speak Kriol, when speaking to my partner I speak in “Mexican” Spanish, and at work I speak either in English or Quebecois French depending on the person.

Other transformations I underwent were becoming more open-minded, patient and empathic. Although one could argue these in part come just from getting older, seeing how different societies (in this case, Mexico and Canada) react to difficult situations gave me different perspectives and made me more aware of my own blind spots. Experience is truly the best teacher. Living some of these experiences in Mexico and Canada and seeing the impact they had on people made me a lot more aware of my own blind spots. Several times it was hard for me to acknowledge some of the biases I had. But with time, I came to accept them and slowly but surely corrected them.

5. What are the challenges you faced as a student at university? Opportunities?

The first big challenge was probably the language. In my first semester I was enrolled into the common courses amongst which was one that required good argumentative writing in Spanish. Mind you, I had never really handed in any assignment or exam in Spanish and now here I was expected to write argumentative essays at the collegial level in this language.

The other challenge I faced, was being homesick. Moving to Puebla was both the first time I had lived on my own and so far away from all my family. Needless to say, this wasn’t easy for 18-year-old me, especially considering I was also adjusting to a different culture. I recall several times thinking of throwing in the towel and going back home to my comfort zone. Luckily, I have a very non-conformist mother who coached me through these tough times.

Being in a large city and at such a prestigious university also presented several important opportunities. Had it not been for the university, I would not have been introduced to the world of possibilities beyond teaching for those of us with a Math degree. Coincidentally, Math has become somewhat of a hot topic right now with the boom of artificial intelligence and machine learning. I was lucky enough to have selected the undergraduate math program at the university which covered the basis of what would be needed to become a data scientist today.

During the Ph.D., the opportunities were similar. I was fortunate to have chosen Montreal as my host city during a time when the Canadian government would invest millions of dollars to convert the city and province into a North American hub for artificial intelligence. Because of the significant government investment, I was able to easily find research positions and a job working with world-class researchers in the field.

6. Your biography is impressive. Can you share with us a list of the scholarships you received? What qualities allowed you to be victorious with these achievements? What is your definition of discipline and success?

Sure. The scholarship I obtained to do my undergraduate studies was named the “Latin American Scholarship”. It was gifted by the university and covered 100% of the tuition fees. For my Master’s degree, I received the “Graduate Excellence Scholarship” which covered 80% of tuition costs, along with a student stipend paid by Conacyt, the national science council of Mexico. Through the same council, I would also obtain an additional scholarship to pay for my research internship in Barcelona. Finally, for my Ph.D. program, I obtained the “Graduate Recruitment Award” given by Concordia University. This was a full tuition waiver for my Ph.D. studies. In addition, I received a stipend paid by the research funding of my supervisors along with several bursaries I would win during the four-year program. Some examples of these are two CIRRELT merit scholarships given by the CIRRELT (a local center for research on transportation and logistics), multiple Concordia conference and travel grants, and the Concordia graduate accelerator funding.

I think the factors that contributed to me obtaining all this financial support were my grades, community involvement through volunteering, and the production and communication of meaningful scientific results. These came at the cost of several late nights, moments of self-doubt, and constantly reading and learning new skills. However, as you can imagine, it was all worth it.

With respect to the definitions of discipline and success, I believe that while success can significantly vary depending on the person, discipline is objective. Discipline, to me, is placing consistent effort towards the goals we want to achieve. On the other hand, success can mean several things to many people. However, if I were to summarize what success means to me, it would be “positively affecting society through one’s contributions.”

7. What are some of the major projects you were/are involved with? How did you infuse the knowledge and skills garnered? What impact have these projects made?

Two of my passion projects have to do with knowledge sharing and attracting young minds to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). As a result, my friends and I created the Montreal Operations Research Student Chapter (MORSC) and The Operations Research Challenge (TORCH). The former is a graduate student led association dedicated to organizing events that promote knowledge sharing and community building among students with interest in the field. The latter is an association of university students that organize an annual one-day competition to attract high school students to the field of operations research and data science. Both have been successful at creating a strong community and as a result have impacted the lives of many people who either managed to get a job, find a thesis supervisor, or in most cases, found a good friend because of what these two organizations do.

8. In one of my recent articles, I stated: ‘It is important to realize that majority of Belize’s younger populations continue to be very mediocre as it relates to becoming holistically educated and cultured, personally and professionally.’ What’s your perspective on this?

That’s an interesting perspective. I think this applied to me while I was growing up in Belize. There weren’t many extra-curricular activities or guidance being offered to steer me towards becoming a more cultured individual. On the other hand, I needed to save money to have the possibility of pursuing a degree, so I took a weekend job at Corozal’s Texaco learning to make glass windows and frames, farming and occasionally pumping gas. In my free time, I would either just be hanging out drinking by the beach with friends, playing basketball, or going out to the clubs and bars. I figured I deserved this leisure since I worked hard even on the weekends.

Now from this example, there are two important points that come up. The first is the lack of extra-curricular activities to guide and motivate the youth toward more productive past-times that cultivate the mind. I’m not sure if this is still the case in Belize, but when I was growing up there in the early 2000s, more definitely needed to be done.

The second point is that a lot of Belizean youth might not have the luxury of time to cultivate the mind outside of school. Many families expect them to contribute to the family economy once they’re past a certain age. In so doing, it makes their desire for leisure more prominent and so books and culture go to the back of the priorities list. This is the picture I have from when I left Belize in 2006, and honestly, I’m not sure if that’s the case now. In my family at least, it doesn’t seem to be.

In fact, I think this younger generation is potentially more holistically educated and cultured than I. When I visit home and talk with the younger members of my family, I see they are a lot more socially conscious and cultured than I was at their age. I believe the increase of internet access has contributed to this. I also see on some social media platforms several younger Belizeans (younger than I at least) making their voices heard, with strong, well-researched opinions and the facts to back them up. It is something that I personally admire.

9. You have won many accolades throughout your educational tenure and life, this far. Please share with us some of the major recognitions? What important conferences have you participated in? Contributions made?

The most meaningful recognitions for me were being able to address my peers at the graduation ceremony as the valedictorian. This is an honor I received when I graduated from primary school, sixth form, my undergraduate program, and my Ph.D. program. For me it’s really an honor to give this address as it gives me the opportunity to reminisce on our journey together over the last few years and project our paths for the future, painting a picture of how we can contribute to the world.

I’ve also received three awards that recognize my efforts as a volunteer. These were the Stanley G. French Medal, the Concordia Council on Student Life’s Outstanding Contribution Award and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Science’s Judith Liebman Award. These awards were given for the efforts made in community building through the two associations related to my field of study.

Finally, I also received two departmental awards for the presentation of my Ph.D. research. These were meaningful to me as they validated that I am able to effectively communicate scientific results to a broader audience that does not have the same technical background as I do.

With respect to conferences, I was very lucky to be able to present my work in several of them. Some of the presentations that stand out are those I did at the 29th European conference on Operational Research and those I did at the INFORMS Annual meeting in Phoenix and Houston. What made these presentations so special for me was that at these conferences, I started new collaborations with several researchers for the first time as a result of mutual interest in our scientific work.

10. What three words do you have to say to young Belizeans?

Considerate: Be considerate of other people’s feelings in complicated situations. You don’t know what they may be going through.

Speak-out: If ever you witness an injustice or ill-intentioned behaviour, speak out.

Persevere: You can do anything you set your mind to but it probably won’t be easy. There will be moments of self-doubt but trust me, we all have them, just keep pushing through and eventually you’ll succeed.