Forged by FAU - Toni Jackson
Wajih AlBaroudi
7/26/2020
#ForgedbyFAU
This series focuses on highlighting former student-athletes in an effort to share how their time, education and experience at FAU prepared them to be successful, and to bring those principles and ideas into the world every day.
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Toni Jackson helps save lives across the country as a traveling emergency room physician, treating everything from broken bones to COVID-19. The Florida Atlantic University alum’s path to medicine, coincidentally, began with another long-distance journey.
A Montego Bay, Jamaica high schooler, Jackson sought a U.S. college education and eventually a medical career. The only problem: her 15-year-old age. Jackson traveled to the States anyway, took a year off track, then eventually enrolled at one of the only universities willing to accept someone at 16, the University of Miami.
Jackson spent the 2005-2006 season with the Hurricanes but soon realized her dream college was a quick drive north.
“I heard that FAU was right up the road and they had an awesome track program and they were accepting new candidates,” Jackson said, “and so I applied, and I got in.”
In 2007, Jackson joined the Owls’ track & field team as a walk-on. And the absence of a scholarship motivated her. Walking-on was an “excellent place to start,” Jackson explains, because it made her feel like she continuously needed to “earn my place” on the team.
That underdog mentality paid off for Jackson. She still holds the fifth fastest outdoor 800-meter run in FAU history with a 2:12:27 and is eighth all-time in the indoor 800-meter with a 2:15:23. Most importantly, though, it eventually earned her the scholarship she coveted.
When I finally got a scholarship, it was such a huge help,” Jackson said. “It was such a huge help and it meant so much for my family. It meant so much for my financial future. It meant so much for my education. It really was a help.
"It really was a big saving grace for me, coming to Florida Atlantic University and doing so on a scholarship.”
Jackson graduated from FAU in 2010 with a degree in biological sciences, attended medical school from 2011-15, then completed her residency in ‘18. And even though eight years passed since her last track season, she turned back to those memories when reviewing job opportunities. Jackson says traveling was “one of the things I loved about running” and sought a career where she could “do the same thing.”
That thought process led Jackson to becoming a traveling emergency physician. She works with a company responsible for nationwide hospital staffing, helping out when hospitals lose physicians to scenarios like sudden retirements and maternity leave.
As an FAU student-athlete, Jackson says she learned how to handle failure and push herself along with many other lessons. Those experiences now “definitely” help her on a day-to-day basis.
“Over time as an athlete you learn very important skills like determination, and discipline, and the influence of having mentors,” Jackson said. “Those are just a few of the things that I can think of that are directly extracted from my track experience, and how effective those tools were in making sure that I was successful in my role as an emergency room attending [physician].”
Unpredictability has always defined Jackson’s job, but even more so this year. The COVID-19 pandemic thrust her into the frontlines of a disease afflicting over four million Americans, per CDC data.
Jackson says emergency physicians are “adept in handling pandemics” but admits they are in “uncharted waters” regarding their knowledge and treatment of the disease.
“The field is changing as we are playing the game,” Jackson said. “And so, it is oftentimes calling on us to adapt, to not hold onto theories that may or not be working, to be flexible. Also, we have the responsibility of educating the public. So, it’s a pretty dynamic and challenging time to say the least. But I think with kind of everybody everyone coming on board, we can get through this.”
Jackson came from humble beginnings and is saving lives daily thanks largely to her scholarship and student-athlete experience at FAU. She implores people to donate to the Paradise Club, which helps fund scholarships for future FAU student-athletes, for that very reason.
“You certainly should donate if you can because there are people for whom otherwise this is not an opportunity, or this is not something that is feasible for them,” Jackson said. “So, by giving, you’re opening doors for somebody who’s like me, who’s from a developing country in the Caribbean, who previously would never have had an educational opportunity like this or be able to finance it and not have this huge debt burden.
“You are contributing,” she added, “to members of society who will go on to do amazing things.”