CREATING HER OWN
LUCK
NEW SENATOR QUITS PTSC JOB AND
LOOKS TO BIGGER
FUTURE
By Sandra Chouthi
Sunday Express
February 13, 2000
Page 11
Newly-installed Tobago Senator Jearlean John enters the boardroom
with two assets: self-confidence and the ability to negotiate.
Thanks
to her parents Shenton and Vida.
Shenton,
a retired supervisor with the Works Ministry, never had a secondary education,
but he was "bright and focused."
"He
always lifted himself above any situation," John said, in an exclusive
interview with the Sunday Express.
That
probably best explained her silence during the two-week constitutional wrangle
between President Arthur N R Robinson and Prime Minister Basdeo Panday over the
firing of John's predecessors, Agnes Williams and Nathaniel Moore.
John
has officially resigned as the chief executive officer on contract at the
Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC) because it was the
"decent" thing. She was sworn
in last Tuesday as a senator but despite rumours of her impending appointment
as a minister, she said no such offers had been made.
"I
was focused on my work here and listening to the debate," was how she
described her state of mind during the impasse between the President and Prime
Minister over her appointment.
Talk
of debate conjured images of her invaluable education among the men of
Charlotteville, Tobago, where she grew up.
They lived on a hill, which meant there was no television transmission,
but there was a library, which her father often used.
"Charlotteville
men on the whole were debaters," she said, referring to "sea piongs"
- her father, grandfather Cadman Murray and others. "They'd be on the sand arguing about everyone
from Churchill to Martin Luther King to Hitler. And I'd sit there and listen."
Her
skills shone during discussions with the American College in Pennsylvania on
behalf of her former employer, the Institute of Business (IOB), when the
college's president interrupted discussions to ask where she had learned to
negotiate.
"I
said that came from Charlotteville," John replied.
The village had raised a child.
When
other villagers praised John's lighter-skinned and "beautiful"
younger sister, 'Jacqueline', John's mother told them: "Have you seen the
dark one?"
"I
walk this land as if I own it," said John, mother of one, Aisha, 17. "I survive because of my daughter's
love and my mother's prayers."
Her
parents separated when she was about ten and her mother came to Trinidad with
her six children in tow to work at a friend's tyre shop in Barataria. After the owner died, her mother Vida took
over the shop, upgraded it, and still manages it with her son Rodney.
John,
who gave her age as "not yet 40", was amusingly realistic about her
background: "I wasn't born with no gold spoon or godfather. I'm black and my head picky."
She
recognised Trinidad as a "land filled with opportunities", and which
has been good to her. The IOB was the
gateway to the world. Its executive
director Dr Bhoe Tewarie was a good coach who pushed her forward. He left her with this philosophy, "Do
everything for the right reason, and the world will come to you."
So
it appeared.
John
worked as the IOB's manager of its international MBA programme for about a year
from February 1996 before landing the PTSC job when then CEO Trevor Townsend
was sent home after running afoul of Public Utilities Minister, Ganga
Singh. Pressed on how she came to be
interviewed by the PTSC board for the job of its CEO, which was never
advertised, John said: "I can't answer that."
Asked
if she was recommended for the job by a member of the Government, John laughed
and replied: "I built up capacity inside of the IOB."
Was
she a member of the ruling United national Congress? She chose not to comment.
She also refused comment on who exactly recruited her for the Senate.
John,
who prefers doing two laps around the Queen's Park Savannah five times a week
with her fried Debbie, to working the cocktail circuit, is known to work at the
PTSC office even on Sundays her former boss, Robin Maraj, director of studies
at the School of Business and Computer Studies (SBCS), confirmed her extended
hours.
From
debate student to business executive to boss to senator.
But
steer clear of asking John about politics: how will she vote if she disagrees
with a section of draft legislation before Parliament that may or may not have
any connection to Tobago; who will she be more loyal to - Government, or
Tobago.
She
was not willing to commit herself either way.
How she will vote will depend on one of her primary strengths: negotiate
and compromise for a win-win position.
"I
don't want to draw a line in the sand", she said. "I want to do good work and be
respected for it. I'm not a shrinking
violet; I want my work to do the talking.
"One
can frame a piece of legislation to make sure that everyone comes out
winning. Allow me when the time comes
for me to be sensible and make a responsible decision."
She
will leave in a month several projects in the works at PTSC: the arrival this
week of 27 new buses, and another 21 in March totaling $31 million; the launch
at the end of February of a website of PTSC's new routes, connecting points and
ties integrating the blue and red buses; the projection of a modest profit of
$3 million by year's end from a deficit of the same figure three years ago; and
computerizing several departments by April at the cost of $750,000.
"We
narrowed that deficit by prudence", John said. 'I never saw PTSC as a permanent assignment. My assignment was to transform the organisation.
She
has resigned - her letter was dated February 8, the day she was sworn-in - but
has two major companies for senior positions under consideration. She has recommended to PTSC chairman Winston
Suite an in-house replacement.
"I
create my own opportunities," John said, without elaboration on the source
of her offers.
|
RESUME |
|
New
government Senator Jearlean John is recognised by former colleagues as a hard
worker who does not take sides. John
worked as manager of the UWI Institute of Business international MBA
programme for about a year from February 1996 and Nirmala Harrylal, a
business development officer there, still regards John as her mentor. "Through
her I began to build (myself) professionally," said Harrylal, 26. "She's
a global manager," added Harrylal, "an astute planner and
organiser." Her
former IOB colleagues were not surprised at her accelerated rise in business
and now politics. "She
always had an eye for business," Harrylal said, a point underscored by
Bhoe Tewarie, the IOB's executive director. "She
was always looking for an opportunity to be more than ordinary," Tewarie
said. John
was head of an IOB team that was responsible for arranging the seminar
featuring the crowd-pulling positive-thinking guru Deepak Chopra in
1996. Seven hundred attended. The
recently appointed senator was working at the School of Business and Computer
Science (SBCS) as academic manager, when she applied to the IOB. She had obtained an Associate in Business
executives, an alternative route to a first degree in business; and an
advanced diploma in management through the distance learning Heriot Watt
University, Edinburgh Business School.
All her studies were done locally. Tewarie
hired John recognizing that her new role would be a "short learning
curve." John developed the
institute's financial and insurance programmes, through negotiations with the
American College in Pennsylvania. She
had also arranged with an institute in Virginia for the IOB to be the
"sole deliverer" of the certified financial analyst programme. Robin
Maraj, director of studies at the SBCS, said he met John as a student there
and offered her a job because he was impressed with her interpersonal and
intellectual talents. "Her
main concern is not money but people," said Maraj. "It sounds like a political answer,
but it is the truth. For Jearlean's
entire time at the SBCS, she worked six days a week. I hear she does seven at the PTSC." - Sandra Chouthi |