Rozett Phillips

My 12 year old self and my 16 year old self thought that the world was a very unfair place because I was born black, I was born a woman – or a girl – and being a black girl in South Africa during the Apartheid era was, like it could have been the worst possible curse that could have been given to me. So when I was that age I thought that for me to make something out of my life was going to be extremely difficult because every possible difficulty that I could have been given, I had been given. And if I look at my life today, I just realize that all of those hardships that I had, and all of the good things that have happened to me – I have married the best possible man on earth, I had the best father because as much as we were poor, he couldn't give me money but he gave me my education – he gave me the appreciation for my education. My mother gave me the absolute will to succeed and an a “it's never good enough attitude.” There's always more that you can do. My grandmother – she wasn't even related to me but this woman became my grandmother, it's this lady that my mother lived with when she was studying – so she was basically the landlady. But the landlady became my grandmother, so I don't even have this notion of “family” that is blood related. You know, the world gives you family. So that was my grandmother. And she never saw color. To her, I was just a beautiful person. I married somebody that wasn't even part of my culture – I studied in South Africa, he was born in Zimbabwe, but we met in South Africa. He is Hindu, I am Christian. It's almost impossible that we would meet – much less get married! And lived this phenomenal life – if you just think about Hindu culture vs. Christian culture – bring the two together. Just think about it. Nobody thought we would last because it's so different. And yet 14 years later we probably have the best possible relationship you could find. He's my best friend, completely supports absolutely everything I do. And then I ended up at Accenture – a place that saw my potential, that sometimes I didn't even know I had. So that's why I say that the world saves its best gifts just for me. It turned what I thought was a curse into everything from the hardships to the blessings into complete gifts, like it was saved just for me. [Off the record part about seeking egg donor] C: So you started to feel like the world had dealt you the worst hand, and then you started to feel this appreciation... but was there a moment or a turning point for you when you started to recognize that? When I got into medical school, there was no way I was going to be able to pay for it but I got into medical school. Where I come from when you're the eldest child you have to go to work – there's just not enough money in the family so you have to go to work. But my father didn't expect me to go to work, and I got into medical school and I got all the scholarships that I needed to be able to study without paying a single cent! And there was a point in the second year of medicine where – it's not going to make any sense to you – but let me explain. When you lived where I lived, you lived in this insular society and you know you're poor, you don't really know how difficult the world is, but you do know that your horizons are very small. So you get into medical school you realize, actually my horizons are a little bit bigger. And then you come across people that have everything in life – for the first time in your life you come across these people because they are also in medical school. University brings all types of people together. And it was in my second year of medical school and a white person that was in my class – you get assigned a partner – this person chose not to be my partner. Because he probably looked at me and thought 'she's going to be stupid' – that's my perception, I'm not saying it's a reality. But he went back to the supervisor and said 'I want to choose somebody else to partner with me.' And I remember it to this day – that was a turning point because at that point I said to myself 'This is the last time I'm going to let anybody make me feel any less than anybody else.' At the end of that year, he was my yardstick and I did better than him in the class. And to that point, I had considered him to be also a curse! And when I looked at this I thought 'Actually, it was a blessing that that man – or that boy at the time – was in my life,' because he made me realize that for whatever reasons he did what he did – he made me realize that I can overcome just about anything. So that was when I was 20/21. C: Did he see you surpass him? I have no idea – didn't matter! It used to matter I think. It probably mattered until that point – comparing myself and making sure that the world appreciates me, etcetera etcetera. At that point it was just all about finding my own space in the world without having to compare myself to anybody else, and just do justice to the gifts I've been giving: the gifts of