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Choices Magazine's Outstanding Young Achiever for 2002
2002 - Jodi-Anne Maxwell
International spelling champion and winner of The Scripps Howard Spelling Contest staged in the US in 1998.
Jodi-Anne’s education began at the Covenant Christian
Academy and Children’s Centre,
and continued at
Ardenne Prep. School where she sat the Common Entrance
Examination and gained a place at Ardenne High School.
Jodi’Anne’s spelling abilty was discovered in prep school when she became the St. Andrew spelling bee champion at age 10.
She went on to become the National Champion of Jamaica at
age 11 and the International Spelling
Bee Champion at 12 by winning the prestigious Scripps Howard competition in the USA. In the process, Jodi-Anne became the
first non-American and the
first black person to triumph in that contest.
Several States in the USA declared a “ Jodi-Anne
Maxwell’s day in 1998,” after she
became their national champion.
Houses of Assembly,
Congress, Boroughs and City
Councils and the Governor General of Jamaica have given
Proclamations, Citations and
Resolutions.
Both the BET Winter 1999 Magazine and the New York
Times listed Jodi-Anne as
one of the ten black persons who blazed a trail in
1998 and among those who greatly
impacted lives.
At home in Jamaica, both the Daily Gleaner
and The Jamaica Observer Newspaper have
listed her among their “ Best Of Jamaica “ for 1998.
Over the years Jodi-Anne has shared platforms with General
Colin Powell, Rev. Jesse
Jackson, Ambassador Andrew Young, Mayor Bill Campbell
of Atlanta, Dr. Basil Bryan, Jamaica’s Consul General in New York, former mayor Rudy
Giuliani
of New York, US Senators, Presidents, Prime Ministers
and Governors.
Jodi-Anne received a full scholarship from the University
of the West Indies and is pursuing a law
degree.
As a devout Christian, Jodi-Anne gives God the credit for all of her achievements. (June 2001)
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