The entrepreneurial spirit has always moved Jamion Berry ’93. After his graduation from Gilmour, Berry enrolled at Kenyon College, and, while pursuing his degree in chemistry and chemical engineering, he also served as captain of Kenyon’s #1 NCAA Division III soccer team for two years and helped to found the first black fraternity in the school’s history. He says he had developed a familiarity with what it felt like to be a minority in smaller programs while at Gilmour, and that this inspired him to help other young black men to find their footing at Kenyon. “Those men are still some of my best and closest friends, even now,” Jamion says.

 

After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree at Kenyon, Jamion continued his engineering education at Washington University, where he earned a second degree, a Bachelor of Applied Science in chemical engineering in 1999. He says his experiences at Gilmour prepared him superbly.

 

“The rigor and discipline of Gilmour opened so many doors for me. Grit and resilience got me through.”

 

After starting his career with Kraft Foods in Jacksonville, Jamion realized that his future was calling him to more than a chemical engineering job. “It was not something that I wanted to do day in and day out, and I quickly realized that if I could do chemical engineering, I could do anything.” That attitude led him to start a side business in property management, a construction company that allowed him to tap into his entrepreneurial drive.

 

After a stint in Atlanta in Kraft’s corporate environment, Jamion obtained an executive MBA from Emory University in 2015, and eventually found himself as the Director of Continuous Improvement at McDonald’s Corporation in Chicago. This revealed to him a truth about himself: “The corporate culture just wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to make myself into someone else in order to succeed. So I decided to grow in a different direction.”

 

When the pandemic hit, Jamion’s passion for fashion inspired him to start a new company, Execumask, which produces fashionable masks, pocket squares, scarves and lanyards for the professional world. He also relocated and expanded his real estate business to Chicago and Cleveland, finding new opportunities among the tumult of the last several years.

 

“I often find that people struggle with the ‘how’ of their aspirations. If they don’t know how to get to the goal, they never start. My advice: just start. The ‘how’ will come in time.”