Features
At 9, while growing up poor in southwest Rochester, Tony Broyld got hooked up with a mentoring program that matched him with a microbiologist at the Medical Center. The laboratory, he observed, was a place where differing viewpoints and new ideas were embraced.
“When living in an environment where survival is the first priority, that stuff becomes lost,” recalls the biomedical engineering major. “My mom said, ‘This is the light at the end of the tunnel.’ I realized that through education you can build a better life for yourself—which I’ve done.”
Though eventually he would like to teach biomedical engineering at a predominantly white college, where he could reach out to minorities whose undergraduate experiences more closely mirror his own, Broyld first plans to pursue his master’s and doctoral degrees and find work in the imaging technology industry. As the president of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity and the vice president of the University’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, Broyld has emphasized participation in community service projects as a way of giving back to society:
“I feel like I have a responsibility to the generation coming after me because I got a lot of help. I want people to know that if you work hard you can attain some success.”
