Jan. 8, 2024, Ukeme Awakessien Jeter became Upper Arlington’s first Black mayor. In 2022, she became the first person of color to be elected to UA’s city council. Since moving to Upper Arlington in 2018, Jeter has continuously broken societal barriers in hopes of making Upper Arlington a community a better place to live in for all.
Jeter has never been afraid of change. Born in Nigeria, she spent most of her formative years in Oman. She immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 18 and spent time in Maine, Massachusetts, Arizona, and, now, Ohio. She got a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Massachusetts and worked as an engineer for years. She then went to law school at Case Western University and worked at a firm as a lawyer. She has a book coming out later in 2024 on the power of immigrant leadership, and now she’s the mayor of our community.
Jeter commented on her life of constant pivoting.
“I’ve always grown up having to adapt quickly. I just wasn’t afraid of change just because I had no choice as a little kid. I would actually tease my friends when I was younger and say ‘Well, don’t be friends with me too long because by then I’ll be gone,’” she said.
She spoke on the influence of her parents in her upbringing.
“My parents…they were the first set of feminists that I knew. And [my parents] always said ‘Listen, what a man can do, a woman can do’…In Nigeria, women often go to college– they’re smart, but they end up back home being homemakers in the kitchen. Like that’s just the way it’s been. But I don’t think my parents envision[ed] that for my sisters and I,” Jeter said.
Jeter’s road to Upper Arlington follows a familiar pattern. She had initially left engineering for law because she felt she wasn’t reaching her full potential, and she felt similarly at a law firm.
“I started to feel very, very quickly, and you will find this as a theme of my life: boxed in. Well, it’s just like, I’m feeling like an engineer all over again, just drafting these patent applications,” she said.
Her move to Columbus came very soon after.
“On my personal side of life, I ended up going through a divorce. I had two kids at the time. And with the divorce, I ended up moving to Columbus, Ohio. That’s how I ended up in Upper Arlington five years ago,” Jeter said.
Through her daughter, who was in kindergarten at their time of moving, Jeter very quickly saw the racial conflicts present in the community.
“We get here, and my daughter starts going to kindergarten. And it hits you like a ton of bricks: ‘Why is she the only Black kid in her kindergarten class?’ And I’m not talking just her kindergarten class, I’m talking [about] her kindergarten grade. I mean not even a single one. And so how is this playing out for a five year-old? She comes home one day and she’s like ‘Hey Mom, can I straighten my hair?’ So within the first month of her being here, it happened…As a mother, this is my community of choice. And here I was with the thought that my choice wasn’t right. Why does [my daughter] want to straighten her hair? And so that singular thing took me down a path of wanting so desperately for my daughter to feel like she was part of this community without changing any part of her,” she said.
After this, one could say that her long road to mayorhood began, despite the fact that not everything fell into place immediately. The thing that pushed her into action came during Black History Month in February of 2019.
“Then February 2019 becomes our first Black History Month in Arlington. I dropped my daughter off at school, and there is no Black History Month happening. Nothing yet. And I think to myself, ‘I’m black 365 days a year’ …And if [my daughter]’s not talking about it, that means her classmates are not talking about it, that means the community’s not talking about it. And that bothered me. That was a problem. And so I made my first post to the Upper Arlington discussion forum,” Jeter said.
Her post put her in contact with groups like EqualUA and UA’s Community Relations Committee.
“So I started to get into these different groups… and what I heard from others was ‘Oh, my God, like, we are a community that needs to be better, and we’re ready for change,’ I just felt that sentiment within the community. And we ended up organizing our first Black History Month for the city in February 2021,” Jeter said.
And the rest is UA history, with Jeter becoming the community’s first mayor of color in January 2024.
All in all, Jeter’s success and perseverance comes from a life of change.
“I’m a newcomer, and I’ve been a newcomer in so many places my whole life. Some have always kind of seen a newcomer as a weakness, and people don’t take newcomers seriously, but while running for city council, I started to see [that] my being a newcomer can be very valuable, especially here. Be the change you want to see, but how often do we actually end up doing it?” she said.
