2 2 • GCU TODAY
Y
ou think you’re busy? The story
of Kim Guillory and Joi Alicea,
two highly motivated sisters who
entered Grand Canyon University’s
doctoral program together, makes the most
fervent workaholic look like a slacker and could
inspire the most passionate preacher.
Guillory, 46, grew up as the oldest female
child in a single-parent home, which meant
the responsibility of helping raise the other
four children fell to her. She then had six
children, the first at age 18, and raised them
largely on her own.
That didn’t stop her from getting a
bachelor’s in business management from
LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas,
and a master’s in human sciences from Our
Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio,
where she also did Ph.D. coursework in
leadership. Sometime this year, she plans to
complete work on her doctor of philosophy
in general psychology with an emphasis in
cognition and instruction from GCU.
Guillory lives in Spring, Texas, near
Houston, and has been a flight attendant for
United Airlines for 24 years, the last 19 flying
internationally. She has been a sociology
adjunct professor for eight years, an advanced
leadership skill instructor for six years for the
United Association for Labor Education, and
has lectured at four universities: Penn State,
Rutgers, Massachusetts and Cornell.
She is the founder and past president of
the Greatness of NW Spring affiliate of the
National Council of Negro Women. She was
voted Humanitarian of the Year by United
Airlines and was listed in Who’s Who in
Black Houston. She is on so many different
committees, has lectured in so many places
and has attended so many conferences
worldwide, it would take another page to
list them all.
Alicea, 41, and her husband, Edgard, have
a baseball team in their Litchfield Park, Ariz.,
house — nine kids, all boys. Seven of them
played football last fall, and two are in band.
Even though she was pregnant through
most of her higher education, she still found a
way to get a bachelor’s in liberal studies from
Xavier University in Cincinnati and an MBA
from Thomas More College in Crestview
Hills, Ky.
Alicea has been a Maricopa County adult
probation officer for 12 years, and she has
been in real estate for eight years and owns
a brokerage that manages 64 properties. She
also is working on a doctor of education in
organizational leadership with an emphasis in
organizational development that she aims to
earn from GCU in 2016.
And she does all this even though
her kidneys operate at only 33 percent
of capacity because of focal segmental
glomerulosclerosis, a scarring of the kidney
that has plagued her since childhood.
Mother knows best
How do they do it? Where do they get the
energy? Talk with their mother, Brenda
Guillory, and you get an education, just as
they did. Both daughters make it clear that
they’re simply cut from the same cloth —
Mom is the one who provided the sturdy
fabric as she raised her two daughters and
three sons in south-central Los Angeles.
“I gave them values, and it’s all based
around God,” she says. “If you have belief
in the living God, you do things differently
from the rest of the world.”
There were lots of rules. Clothes had
to be “intelligent,” which meant the girls
couldn’t wear pants. They couldn’t wear
makeup, either. There was no alcohol,
no sugar, no drugs except aspirin. No
smoking, of course. There sometimes was
no hot water, either, although that wasn’t
by choice. They didn’t eat meat. And they
spent parts of Wednesday and Friday and all
day Sunday in church.
“That’s where I got my backup — in
church,” their mother says. “You don’t go
home and live another life.”
The sisters talk fondly of those times,
including the long Sundays in church,
where Alicea did some preaching.
“It was just a way of life for us,” she says.
“It wasn’t that we were forced to do it. I
wouldn’t change a thing.”
Guillory’s memory is that “we had a very
nurturing, loving environment built around
family.”
On
line
KimGuillory (left) is pursuing her
doctoral degree even though she
is an international flight attendant,
teaches in a variety of venues and has
six children. Her sister, Joi Alicea,
has nine children and two jobs but
nevertheless joined Guillory in the
doctoral pursuit.
left
photo by
len
bennett
,
the
lennz
photography
;
right
photo by darryl webb
Degrees of Difficulty
Sisters in doctoral program show what hard work,
discipline are really all about
B Y R I C K V A C E K
How do they do it? . . .“If you have belief in
the living God, you do things differently
from the rest of the world.”
