Who's on Board: Dr. Kemba Noel-London
Dr. Kemba Noel-London is a multi-talented leader. Along with being an athletic trainer, health inequity researcher and social epidemiologist, she recently joined The ACE Project’s Board of Directors, bringing her many talents to our team. One of Kemba’s goals in life is to provide children with the opportunity to play sports while developing skills and learning life lessons in a safe environment, because sports have been instrumental to her development: as student, athlete and professional.
“I’ve been an athlete my entire life,” said Kemba, who is originally from Trinidad and Tobago. “I just grew up being active and then that translated into making my first national team for volleyball when I was 13.”
Even though her primary focus was on volleyball, Kemba remained a multi-sport athlete. Growing up in Trinidad and Tobago with different sport culture she got the opportunity to experience different sports through all levels of her schooling. In secondary school, she chose volleyball as her focus, but at 15 years old, Kemba tore her ACL days before the senior volleyball team was announced, dashing her hopes of making the team after months of preparation. While this was absolutely devastating, the experience managing her injury motivated Kemba to pursue sports medicine.
“I just didn't want my friends who were on the team (and went on to be professional volleyballers) to experience what I experienced,” Kemba said, “And I didn't want the younger ones coming up to experience what I experienced. I wanted them to be able to play sports in a safe environment, which also includes being able to access the care that you need.”
Kemba came to the US after graduating high school to pursue education that would allow her to provide healthcare to athletes. Kemba graduated from Saint Louis University's Doisy College of Health Sciences with both her undergraduate in exercise science and master’s in athletic training. Post-graduation, she worked in South Carolina where she was introduced to rural healthcare and a wider variety of injuries than she hadn’t been exposed to before (including some unfortunate squirrel hunting incidents). She then returned home to Trinidad and Tobago for a few years and worked as an athletic trainer with national teams, primarily men’s rugby 7’s and 15’s as well as other local and international athletes. She left to pursue a PhD in public health studies, after recognizing the gap in her education and training in being able to tackle and solve persistent issues in healthcare facing athletes from a policy level. She successfully earned said Ph.D, in 2021 in Public Health Studies with a concentration in Health Management and Policy along with a post-graduate certificate in Geospatial Health Sciences from her alma mater.
When asked how she ended up on the ACE Team, Kemba, who now lives in Chicago, exclaims, “It just makes sense!”
“Tennis was kind of always there in the background [of my childhood]. I just was never really good at it,” Kemba admits. “But I had the opportunity to be bad at it, I had the opportunity to play, figure out that this wasn’t my sport and just enjoy it regardless of my skill level. When I got to the US, I realized having the opportunity to be bad at sports is not something a lot of kids get.”
After learning about the ACE Movement in 2020, Kemba was quick to step up to the service line. She helped us navigate the early days of the pandemic by joining our annual leadership meeting and sharing her insight with our board and staff. Then, she worked with staff to update our child safeguarding policies and procedures as we reestablished after-school programs at our partner schools. This year, she was recently voted in as Secretary. With so many talents, Kemba is sure to make a major difference as an ACE leader. She is already advocating for support with a call to those passionate about sports-based youth programs and educational equity to be part of the team.
“People should join the board…if you want to see communities do better and improve,” said Kemba, “Why not support an organization that has such a strong record of doing that?”
