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Thirteen Patents and Counting: Tralance and Jo Addy
Trailblazing Success in Love and Life

By Godfred P. Otuteye

Dr. Tralance Addy
Knight House, 1963
 

One blustery winter night in early 1970, Jo Alison, an eighteen-year old freshman at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, was hurriedly making her way to a meeting of the African Students’ Union at the University of Massachusetts (“UMass”) at nearby Amherst, Mass.

The meeting had already started when she walked in and was immediately arrested by the deep, sonorous voice of the speaker with its modulated cadence. Impressed and attracted at the same time she volunteered to serve on the same committee as he. When they finally met she learned his name was Tralance Addy from Ghana, a first year doctoral student in engineering at UMass.

Thirty-nine years later, in 2009, Tralance and Jo Addy celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary with their four grown children and more than one hundred family and friends at their fabulously upscale home in exclusive Coto de Caza in Orange County, California. At that event, Tralance related how he had been mildly irritated by the persistent phone calls from that young Smith freshman urging him to get on with the tasks assigned to their committee by the African Students’ Union. Focused on his demanding studies and in keeping with his dispositional distaste for what he calls “frivolity”, Tralance kept a good emotional distance from all women including Jo. Explaining his attitude at the time, he said, “I would not allow myself to be attracted to her. I was consumed with doing something meaningful with my life. I was not interested in a frivolous relationship. For me spending time on such pursuits for personal enjoyment was a waste of time”.

In his seven academic years (1959 – 1965) at Adisadel College, Tralance Addy always stood a commanding head and shoulders above all the heads in any crowd. He was also blessed with a giant intellect and granite will to match. He approached his studies with the commitment of a zealot, the focus of a hawk, the discipline and perseverance of a medieval monk. Not surprisingly, he, along with classmates Victor Pappoe and William Mould, won one of the first, highly coveted ASPAU (African Scholarships Program of American Universities) scholarships sponsored by the African American Institute of New York City to study at one of the top universities in the United States. He was admitted to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania where, in the normal four years for an undergraduate degree, he obtained two degrees in chemistry and mechanical engineering for the price of one. He was immediately admitted to the PhD program in engineering at UMass where in his first year he had that fateful meeting with Jo Alison.

In 1968, less than two years before Jo Alison entered Smith College, the Kerner Commission, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate a series of civil disorders in mostly African-American urban communities in the 1965 – 1967 period, issued its report with the famous, stark warning that the United States “was moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.” The Nixon Administration that succeeded Lyndon Johnson’s in 1969, by a policy of “benign neglect”, ignored the recommendations of the Kerner Commission for sweeping federal initiatives aimed at ending overt racial discrimination and improving educational and employment opportunities, etc. in black communities.

“Separate and unequal” was the policy and enforced practice of the U.S. military in 1941 when the U.S. formally entered World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As a wave of patriotic fervor swept the country, hundreds of black college graduates and undergraduates enlisted to become the first black airmen in the U.S. military. Because of official racial segregation they could not train with the white cadets. They had to earn their single engine and multi-engine pilot’s credentials at a segregated facility at Tuskegee Army Air Field (“TAAF”) in Tuskegee, Alabama. As the Tuskegee Airmen website relates, from 1941 through 1946, 994 black pilots graduated at TAAF. About half of them served overseas flying P-40 Warhawk aircraft in combat in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. They suppressed their rage over the constant humiliations of overt racism (such as no access to the officers’ mess) to which they were subjected and achieved outstanding records of service that has caused their names to live on in hallowed memory.

Jo Alison’s father was a Tuskegee airman. And like him, she grew up tough and adventurous, a strong-willed fighter that is determined to overcome all obstacles and stare down any adversity to reach her goals. Combine that character with her intellectual brilliance and for her, excellence becomes the norm. As one of their family friends testified of her at their thirtieth anniversary with obvious embellishment, “My wife met Jo Addy a few years ago and since then hardly anything in our lives has been good enough. The children’s schools and colleges have been upgraded at more cost, of course. What we read and even the music we listen to are all now in a different, higher category. For Jo nothing but the very best will do”.

The summer after her freshman year, Jo solicited the help of Tralance to arrange contacts for her in Ghana in connection with an odyssey through West Africa that she and a friend were planning. Tralance who gives praise only sparingly, was impressed by the spunk, audacity and maturity of this young, 18-year old woman for her single-minded determination to undertake such a tough trek through eight or more West African countries most of which he himself had not visited.

While Tralance and Jo remained friends, their paths diverged and their relationship thinned over the years. Tralance earned his PhD and went to work in the Philadelphia area. After graduating from Smith, Jo moved to Palo Alto, California to pursue graduate studies in economics at Stanford University. They each married someone else but short-lived, both marriages soon withered and broke up. In 1978, Jo, now single and having reached doctoral candidacy in economics at Stanford University moved to Santa Monica in Southern California to work for the Rand Corporation. Tralance was often in her thoughts. She must have been in his too as she soon received a card from him that said “thinking of you”. This was the kindling that got the fire going. She called and invited him to visit.

As Jo reminisced on that visit, “We went to a lake and we walked and talked. It was the first time that we came together as equals, not as a mentor and protégé.” When asked what attracted him to Jo at this time, Tralance answered, “Jo was serious, mature, and passionate about political things. She had a vision of what needed to be done to improve the world that was the same as mine. I found that uplifting”. There is nothing frivolous here. Tralance exudes gravitas and, like many Ghanaian men of his generation, he viewed the relationship between a man and a woman as mostly private and personal, eschewing as frivolous any public displays of affection. Now he finally saw in Jo a mature woman of substantive intellectual stature that was his equal in the things they both cared about. So what attracted Jo to Tralance? After a significant pause she replied, “The fact that he was emotionally inaccessible was intriguing to me. Tralance was an idea man, not a relationship person. I wanted to reach and bring out the emotional part of him.” And she did. Despite their distance from each other and divergent paths, their love, founded on friendship and mutual respect had taken root and grown in the intervening years. Now it blossomed leading them into a lifelong partnership of love and shared responsibility.

Tralance and Jo got married soon after that Santa Monica visit. They have four gifted and accomplished children: Nii Mantse, Dwetri, Miishe and Naakai. Reflecting on their thirty years of exceptionally successful romantic and business partnership that has taken them to every corner of the globe, Tralance had this to say in tribute to his dear wife, “The biggest value Jo brought to me was to humanize me. She helped me to learn that it is fallacious to “love” the faceless masses but not the person right at hand. I had learned in my youth to be independent and not to need anyone. Today, I am most proud of the growth I have achieved through personal relationships, to think of people as individuals and not just as a group.”
 

Biographical Sketches*

Jo Alison Addy is the Founder and Managing Director of Alsweb™. A business strategist and international economist, her experience includes advising the launch of firms spanning venture capital, medical device and products, digital media, and educational sector clients as well as risk oversight for commercial bank portfolios and responsibilities for development portfolios at the World Bank. Ms. Addy has extensive communications and public relations experience and has served as a spokesperson for local organizations and international commercial banks. She has created and published in-house financial periodicals and is the author of articles and studies for Harvard University’s Center for Business and Government and Rand Corporation. As Business Director for a successful technology venture, in its initial two years she managed the company’s operations and was responsible for the formulation and implementation of strategy. Ms. Addy earned a BA with honors from Smith College in Massachusetts and an MBA from Adelphi University in New York. She achieved Doctoral Candidacy in economics from Stanford University where she was awarded a grant from the Center for Research in International Studies and received an MPA from Harvard University with a specialization in corporate governance. Ms. Addy is fluent in French and a student of Mandarin Chinese.

Tralance Addy is a recognized entrepreneurial leader and inventor with more than 25 years of corporate management experience. Dr. Addy’s career has been distinguished by leadership of the creation and commercial development of breakthrough technologies and ventures. Prior to joining WaterHealth he was an International Vice President of health-care leader Johnson & Johnson (J&J). During his more than 20-year tenure at J&J, he held a number of senior executive positions including Director of Technology Ventures for a subsidiary, Vice President of R&D, and Worldwide President of Advanced Sterilization Products (ASP), a J&J subsidiary that he founded within the corporation. He led the growth of that company to be a worldwide market-segment leader, establishing divisions of the company and marketing channels in more than 40 countries. He was a member of the Global Management Committee of Johnson & Johnson Medical, Inc. He is a recipient of several corporate awards for innovation and entrepreneurship. He is a holder of 13 U.S. and international patents.

Tralance Addy earned BA and BBS degrees in chemistry and mechanical engineering simultaneously from Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania in 1969, and subsequently earned MS and PhD degrees in engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is also a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and, among a number of professional leadership positions, is a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Sustainable Enterprise of the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. He also serves as a member of the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College.
 

What’s next for the Addys?

Tralance Addy (1963/65, Knight) is among those select Santaclausians that the Adisadel School Ode calls upon us to “stand up to honor” as he is one of “those who have gilded the school with their fame”. As their biographical sketches demonstrate both he and Jo worked exceedingly hard to take full advantage of every opportunity that was offered them and achieved success of Olympic proportions, success that should inspire us all to “give nothing but (y)our best and never think of rest”. Like the Tuskegee airmen, they have broken new ground and blazed new trails for us to follow.

Until a few months ago, Tralance was the President and CEO of WaterHealth International, a company that he acquired and reinvented through their private equity firm, Plebys International. WaterHealth is leading the Blue Revolution to make potable water available, affordable, and accessible more rapidly, and on a wider scale to the poorest communities across the globe. In addition to extensive installations in India and the Philippines, WaterHealth has already installed its technologically advanced water purification systems in several villages in Ghana. They are actively seeking opportunities to collaborate with local governments and non-governmental organizations to expand their operations throughout Africa.

Recently, on a WaterHealth business trip to India with Jo, Tralance met a number of Indian professionals on the flight that were returning home after sojourns in the U.S. They told him they were going back to help develop their homeland. Tralance asked himself, “So what am I going to India for”? He added after a pause, “And that’s when it dawned on me that I should be going home to Ghana to help develop my homeland”. Soon after that Tralance, now 65, retired from WaterHealth. Together with Jo, they will devote their energies and expertise to entrepreneurial activities in Ghana through Plebys International. Tralance and Jo Addy, in robust health and trim shape, a true dynamic duo with more than fifty years of business and banking experience between them have what it takes to make a big impact for good on the private sector in Ghana in the years ahead .

*The biographical sketches were copied from the Alsweb™ and WaterHealth websites.

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