Dr Thomas Mensah
Ghanaian-American, chemical engineer and inventor, Dr Thomas Mensah, has urged black people not to allow racial discrimination affect their professional ability in being the best.
According to him, they should work harder to make a difference despite the racial challenges they go through.
He said, “Colour goes away when you are so good.”
“Discrimination is everywhere but Oprah Winfrey said excellence is the antidote to discrimination. Oprah said you excel so well… when they knew you are so good then your colour goes away. When I get up to speaking about fibre optics, I am respected just like Bill Gate or everyone else. But you got to work hard. You got to be good. You got to buck up,” he told a section of the Ghanaian media at Ningo Prampram.
Thomas Mensah works in fields relating to the development of fibre optics and nanotechnology. He has 14 patents, seven of which awarded within a period of six years, and was inducted into the US National Academy of Inventors in 2015
In 2017, Dr Mensah served as an editor-in-chief of the international textbook, Nanotechnology Commercialization, published by AIChE and John Wiley & Sons. He is one of the four inventors in the world who made it possible for the world to be able to send videos and pictures via social media platforms.
He returned to his home country Ghana to launch his new book: The Right Stuff Comes In Black Too. It is a biography of Dr Thomas Mensah. Kingdom Books Ghana has the distribution right to the book, which is the first to be launched with a drone presentation.
Dr Thomas also said he is back home to support his country help use technology to develop Ghana. He mentioned the various interventions he hopes to use to help develop Ghana, including the creation of bullet trains.
“If I give all the technology to America or the whole world and don’t give to my own country, we would have failed Ghana,” he underscored.
“I am so happy Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology invited me to come for lectures and give you Doctor of Science (DSc) Honorary degree but it is not about the accolade,” he added.