Before arriving at the AC Marriott Hotel in New Kingston last Wednesday (August 20), Dana-Paige Rodney innately knew that she was going to be announced the National Commercial Bank (NCB) Foundation’s champion girl among all students shortlisted from across the island.

So much so, that when foundation director Kenia Mattis was delivering her address at the Golden Opportunity Scholarship reveal, ‘the Spirit’ convinced Rodney to rise from her seat and shout that she had a testimony and something to say. 

“I made an outburst in the room today, and many people thought that it was to attack the person who was speaking, but it was not. It was a personal conviction, because I saw how I used to act [in the moment]. I thought that, [in the moment], that my academics was my only way to define myself, and through that, I carried myself in a way where I thought my brain was the only thing that defined me, so, by doing that, I idolised myself and by idolising myself, I carried myself in a way where I was not grateful,” Rodney, who was later announced as the NCB Foundation’s Champion Girl for 2025 with a grand prize of J$700,000 annually, said during an interview with Our Today.

The Queen’s School graduate then noted that in recent days, she has felt a conviction, where God allowed her to be humble, and by reading the room at the AC Marriott Hotel in New Kingston, and with Mattis speaking on issues she could connect with, she was reminded of her past and got up. 

“That’s why I stood up and made that outburst. That message, me standing up like that and being emotional, it was a personal conviction, because I know that having an award like this is very easy to boost yourself up and not remember where you’re coming from, and I constantly have to remind myself of where I’m coming from,” Rodney explained. 

“I feel convicted, as in, I feel like I have something to uphold because it was gifted to me. I’m grateful for it,” she said.

Days before she was announced as the top female scholar for NCB Foundation, she received rejection from a previous scholarship she had high hopes of getting.

Rodney will be attending the Caribbean Maritime University (CMU) to study cybersecurity and digital forensics. Her goal is to become a cybercrime analyst and protect people in the online space from getting scammed pr having their identities stolen. 

As a member of Generation Z, she has spent a lot of time online and seen what cybercrimes have done to people, especially children, by criminals and predators.

“Children online deserve to feel safe. The men and people of Jamaica deserve to be safe online, because everything is being done online, so, by God humbling me and bringing me down to a point where I hear Michael Lee-Chin’s speech, I was able to remain in my conviction,” she said.

One major challenge which Rodney, who grew up with her grandmother in Kingston, faced was continuously engaging in self-injury, by cutting.

She said this was caused by her mind from not being able to live in a nuclear family with her mother and father, but living with her grandmother, Hyacinth Cox, since she was one-year-old and facing financial struggles.

Her story is a powerful one and on worth telling. She said her trauma was her entry point for depression, but one she has now overcome, and one she hopes other girls suffering as she was, will also overcome and not commit suicide. 

“I’m not afraid to show my scars. I used to cut myself. I don’t do that anymore, because He (God) brought me from that area for me to be with NCB today,” Rodney said. 

“What put me in that place was trauma. We all have trauma from being abused, from being shouted by your parents, who say, ‘Move from in front of me. I don’t love you’. And they don’t even have to say it in that way, you feel it because of how they treat you,” she said. 

She said her CAPE grades humbled her this year, because she thought she would have gotten grades ones and twos; however, she saw grades threes and fours, which are still passes, but not of her liking. 

At the CSEC level, she was awarded with four grade ones in English Language, English Literature, Information Technology and Social Studies; three grade twos in Biology, Physics, and History; and a grade three in Mathematics.

She had no intentions to apply for the NCB Foundation scholarship, but a teacher, Edmond Gentles, who believed in her and sent her the scholarship’s application link—and with the grades she got, she never thought she would be selected as a recipient.

“I was like, ‘Why mi a apply for, mi naago even get through?’ And that mindset that I was in then, God brought me out of it to be here now, so that I’m able to actually be convicted and grateful. This is literally the best thing God has done for me,” Rodney said.

“I felt like, ‘Yes, God. I learnt something.’ Because the place that you brought me from, from ungratefulness, to the point where me did a cut up miself and talk bout seh mi did want dead, mi no want dead again,” she said.  

Another change she hopes to make in her life during 2025 is to be baptised.