Kingsley Ormonde Harrop-Williams was born on 12 December 1947 in Golden Grove, West Coast Berbice, British Guiana, and raised in Smythfield.

While working minimum-wage jobs to support his widowed mother in Guyana, he pursued higher education at the City University of New York (CUNY), graduating magna cum laude with a degree in civil engineering.

He went on to earn a Master’s degree at CUNY and a Ph.D. in soil mechanics and engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, funded by a full scholarship.

His professional roles included working as a civil engineer for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy and serving as a consultant for NASA, the Maryland Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Army.

His research has been referenced in prominent studies, including those archived in the ASCE Library, ScienceDirect, KoreaScience, and Google Scholar.

His philanthropic efforts included funding the construction of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and the African American Museum in Washington, D.C.