Mr. Jeris White grew up in a military family and lived in many places around the world.
The journey began in Ft. Worth, Texas where Mr. White was born. Mr. White lived in Guam; Roswell, New Mexico; Seville, Spain; Riverside, California; Fairfield, California; Bellville, Illinois and Amarillo, Texas prior to Hawaii. He played football at Radford High School, Honolulu, Hawaii, and at the University of Hawaii. He was drafted by Miami in the second round of the 1974 NFL Draft and was a professional American football cornerback in the National Football League (NFL) for the Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Washington Redskins. Mr. White played 9 seasons from 1974 to 1982. He played the starting defensive back position in Super Bowl XVII in 1983 for the victorious Redskins.
After his professional football career, Mr. White began with a career in real estate, followed by a position with the Virginia Department of Transportation as a Land Acquisition Specialist focusing on right of way and utilities. He completed a Master’s Degree in Computer & Information Science and became the manager of VDOT’s SMART traffic signal system.
Over the past 15 years, Mr. White has been a systems engineering expert and program manager at Noblis, a nonprofit science, technology, and strategy organization. He has been helping the US Department of Transportation across multiple projects ranging from development of Intelligent Transportation Systems standards and connected vehicle technology (think roads and cars talking with each other and the roadway) to providing program support for the implementation of the National Airspace System voice switches which enable communications between air traffic controllers and pilots of aircraft.
Mr. White enjoys improving our transportation systems for the public good and volunteering his time to engage and encourage future generations of achievers. He lives in Washington, D.C., now. Mr. White works for Noblis, a firm that does technology consulting for government agencies like the Department of Transportation. Memories of his days at Radford and UH come back easily, and in his retirement he'd like to return home. He says he'd like to mentor young football players and work on a Ph.D. in philosophy at UH. “No better place to study that than Hawaii,” he says, “...where East meets West.”
