Aiming to make a difference in the life of others is Shaquiel Rodney, a Business & Marketing student at Nations University.
He recently completed his diploma in Marketing and is now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration & Management at the University of Bedfordshire.
He lives in Tuschen with parents and sibling. As it relates to his education, he attended Leonora secondary and copped nine subjects at CXC.
Rodney is a part of several NGOs such as JCI Guyana (EA Public & Corporate Communications), Small Steps, Big Impact (Public Relations Officer), IDPADA-G Youth Committee (Public Relation Officer), and a few others.
Outside of volunteering Shaquiel, acts as a marketing/social media manager, where he utilizes his knowledge on marketing and works with various small businesses aiding to build their online presence and customer base.
During 2022, he worked a 9-5 job while attending university and volunteering full-time. However, he scheduled his time and placed different hours toward those three areas.
“People tend to not have boundaries with their time and that makes them feel somewhat stressed and overwhelmed and that is something I wasn’t planning on going through so I’d advise everyone to plan their week or month. An app I would recommend that helped me is Notion,” said Rodney.
In 2019, while Rodney was home and realised he had lots of free time on his hand, he decided to volunteer. He did this because he wanted to impact society and also give back to my community and others.
He noted, “I loved volunteering. I also like influencing people and I must say I’ve made some really great friends/networks through volunteering.”
He had to deal with various challenges as he navigated life. He mentioned, “I’ve had to deal with negative stereotypes during university and cyber bullying (fake accounts) as well and I just had to keep focus and remind myself I’m not those things and just block out the noises this helped tremendously, and my previous therapist helped along the way to get through these challenges I was facing.”
Procrastination was another challenge for Rodney, and this was a hard one to deal with.
“Until the day I submitted a coursework paper late, I learned my lesson and hoped this never occurs again. I’ve procrastinated many times and handed in my work on time, but that one time really showed me why I shouldn’t,” he added.
Completing and graduating with his Diploma in Marketing from Nations University, joining Junior Chamber International Guyana (JCI) and making it on JCI Guyana 2023 Board and being the young man I’m growing to become are achievements Shaquiel is proud of.
In the future, Rodney aims to create a Marketing Consultancy Agency.
In less than a year he will finally fulfil the education and experience requirements to own a Successful Marketing Business, which he is very determined to accomplish.
Besides marketing, he loves content creation (such as vlogs, Instagram Reels, ADs) as such he is working hard to get into the content creator lifestyle.
Another goal of Rodney is to become an actor.
He stated, “Many of my friends can tell you this, and it’s something on my bucket list I want to achieve.”
“To do something you’re passionate about even if sometimes you feel as if it’s not possible. Most times when you do the things you love you tend to succeed in that thing or area and you can actually make a living out of that once you have the right work ethic and energy toward it. Forgive yourself, forget the past and move on. I’ve done this and life is so much better for me both mentally and physically. Never stop learning – as time goes by you will learn new things and you should be thankful for that cause you can now educate the people around you,” is Rodney’s advice for youth.
