The rise and rise of Jearlean John

As the new chairman of the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (Udecott), John is being faced with an immense challenge to renew the company’s image amid widespread public outrage regarding the operations of the State-owned company, formerly led by the controversial Calder Hart.

John, who also heads the equally controversial Housing Development Corporation (HDC), received her instrument of appointment last Friday and has already made it clear that her role would be to “stabilise” the embattled company.

Udecott, which has been regarded by some as a law unto itself, has been the driving force behind several of the Government’s mega projects within the past few years and is one of the major vehicles through which it intends to fulfil its 2020 developmental agenda.

In her typical style, John has wasted no time in buckling down to business. She has met with Udecott’s chief operations officer Neelanda Rampaul to get a sense of the projects already in train and to map out a strategy for the way forward.

It is unclear, though, as to whether John, like her predecessor, would be given maximum authority for the operations of the company.

In the interim, she regards the post as “just an additional duty,” one she believes she is quite capable of delivering.

“I am driven and I really get results. I am really objective driven. We have to just get the job done and I am matter-of-fact about that,” John said in an interview shortly after the announcement was made by Prime Minister Patrick Manning.

John knows little else but hard work.

By her own admission, she doesn’t party, but can switch from power suits (she has a passion for dressing up) to rubber boots, polos and a pair of jeans at a moment’s notice.

Case in point: while Manning was announcing her appointment at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s, John was in the trenches listening to the complaints of residents – grassroots people – during a clean-up exercise at the HDC’s complexes in and around Port-of-Spain.

It is a stance she also intends to adopt in her new role – one which is expected to test her mettle as a highly-respected and pragmatic executive.

Undoubtedly, John is in the firing line at a crucial period in the country’s development.

In addition to addressing mounting calls for the entire Udecott board, who served under Hart, to step down, contractors are also urging her to quickly publish the Udecott accounts for 2007-2009.

With the repeated calls for Udecott to clean up its act, John, apart from seeking to streamline its affairs, is also being pressured to restore the public’s confidence in the company.

It’s a tall order, but one which John is quite capable of handling – and conquering – her father Shelton John said recently.

“She would manage it. I have that confidence,”said Shelton, 72.

A retired supervisor with the Ministry of Works and Transport, Shelton said he was not surprised that his daughter had been considered for a high-profile portfolio at Udecott.

“I am never surprised by her achievements in life,” Shelton said.

For him, it was yet another dimension to an already illustrious professional career – one which saw its genesis along the sandy shores of rural Charlotteville, Tobago’s most easterly village.

Speaking in a telephone interview, Shelton said Jearlean, the second of six children, enjoyed a happy and wholesome childhood.

And while she was not born into wealth and privilege, Jearlean, who once amusingly regarded herself as “black with my picky head,” internalised the value of hard work at an early age. She spent a considerable amount of time with her maternal grandparents Cadman and Louisa Murray, where she enjoyed escapades on their cocoa estate.

The young Jearlean was also an avid cricketer who gave the boys in the area “hell on the beach,” Shelton recalled.

Shelton said Jearlean was never a rude child.

“She never did anything really unusual, but kept us proud all along,” he said, adding that Jearlean always appeared to be dissatisfied with her accomplishments at school.

In fact, Shelton recalled that during her early years, Jearlean was something of a child prodigy.

Even strangers, he said, had noticed her ability. “I remember there was a professor from Yorke University named David N Weistub who came to Charlotteville on holiday. He was a personal friend of Cadman and he was holidaying at a bungalow on the beach.

“He (Weistub) said by talking to Jearlean, he saw that her IQ was above average. He asked us to continue to support her because she would make us proud,” Shelton recalled.

Jearlean was only about eight years old at that time and the surprises have not stopped coming, he said.

She attended the Charlotteville Methodist School and later Roxborough Composite, where she displayed a knack for debating.

The talent, she once said, was learnt from the men in her hometown.

“Charlotteville men on the whole were debaters,” John had said in an interview several years ago.

“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, it was said, had come to the fore during discussions with the American College in Pennsylvania on behalf of her one-time employer, the Institute of Business (IOB), when the college’s president broke the flow of the discussions to inquire as to where she had learnt to negotiate.

Working at the IOB appeared to broaden John’s scope and sense of purpose, prompting her to regard Trinidad as a “land filled with opportunities.”

The IOB, in many respects, was her gateway to the world and its then executive director Dr Bhoe Tewarie proved to be good mentor.

He once told her, “Do everything for the right reason and the world will come to you.”

John worked as the manager of the IOB’s international MBA programme in the late 1990s and was revered as an astute planner and organiser, before securing the job at the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC).

The mother of one daughter had been employed at the School of Business and Computer Science (SBCS) as an academic manager, prior to her moving to the IOB.John, who had acquired an advanced diploma in management through Heriot Watt University and Edinburgh Business School, later developed the institute’s financial and insurance programme.

Tewarie, now the Director of the Institute of Critical Thinking at the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies, recalled that he had worked closely with John at the IOB for several years.

“I found her to be very competent and able,” he told Sunday Newsday. “She had the capacity for growth and I am sure she has grown since then.”

Asked if he felt she would perform wonders at Udecott, Tewarie laughed and said, “Based on what I know of her, I think she will do her best on the job and I wish her well.”

Throughout her working life, John developed a reputation as a hard-nosed, no-nonsense professional. But she also tempered this posture with an approachable and good-naturedly demeanour, some have said.

“Jearlean is a powerful and forthright personality,” Shelton said. “But God blessed her with that ability to deal with people and situations without hurting them. She captured the respect of her associates and even those older than her age.”

Her work ethic and penchant for getting the job done would define her career and she was constantly offered high-profile positions, often with a mandate to streamline and transform.

At the PTSC, she had set the framework for the coming on stream of 27 new buses, the launch of a PTSC website detailing its new routes and the computerising of several departments.

“I never saw PTSC as a permanent assignment. My assignment was to transform the organisation,” she said in an interview some years ago.

It was this ability to get the job done that saw John embark, somewhat unceremoniously, on a life in politics, first as a senator, during the Basdeo Panday-led United National Congress (UNC) Government.

Some politicians who had served in the Cabinet with her at that time, though, have expressed skepticism about her capabilities.

Former Planning and Development Minister Trevor Sudama, claimed he had not known John before she entered politics.

“Someone in the government made contact with her and introduced her to Panday as Prime Minister,” he recalled last Tuesday. As Works Minister in the Panday administration, John had oversight for the controversial Piarco Airport Development project and had been summoned to testify during the commission of inquiry into the project.

She once famously described the project as “a feeding frenzy”.

“There had been some difficulties in getting the project on a smooth footing because there had been cost overruns and she was reputed to be some kind of whiz kid in terms of management,” Sudama recalled on John’s influence at that time. “But even when she came on board, there still were difficulties in getting the projects on a smooth footing.

“I didn’t see anything spectacular about her or what she brought to the table. She was just someone who came with a reputation. That reputation, to me, was never realised because they continued to have problems with the project.”

Sudama said he would have thought that John would have brought some insight to the table.

“But she brought nothing complementary to the UNC. She didn’t distinguish herself. She was just another Member of Parliament with a capacity to get things done,” he said.

Sudama also could not say if John had ever joined the UNC or was aligned to any other political organisation.

“In this regard, she was like Brian Kuei Tung, Carlos John and Lindsay Gillete, all of whom came into the party just prior to their winning the elections, and were given top portfolios. We had never heard of them before,” he said.

John has been known to keep her life closely guarded.

She never revealed if she was a member of the UNC and also refused to comment on who had encouraged her to join the Senate.

As for her relatively recent appointment to the HDC, she categorically denied it had anything to do with party affiliation.

Another former UNC minister, John Humphrey, when contacted by Sunday Newsday, claimed he did not work closely with John.

“But, Mr Panday had immense confidence in her abilities and he essentially took the project (airport) from me and placed it in her hands,” recalled Humphrey, who had chaired a committee that had been formed by Panday to deliver the project.

The project remains a sore talking point. Describing their relationship as admirable, fellow Tobagonian Dr Eastlyn Mc Kenzie worked with John in the Senate during the 1990s.

“In the Senate, she was never afraid to tell it like it is. She was a respector of ability but no respector of position, status and post,” the former leader of the Independent bench recalled.

Mc Kenzie, a highly-respected educator, also said that John was very straightforward, forthright and proactive. “She had the ability to size up a situation very quickly. She had that ability to tell people, ‘This is the task at hand and these are the resources.’ She would set her own parameters and did not care about gender issues and other hang-ups,” she recalled.

Outside of the Senate, Mc Kenzie said John was respected as a tough negotiator, especially with international companies.

Although she was highly qualified, John was also a team player who was never afraid to get her hands dirty, Mc Kenzie said.

“She could mingle with the kings and not lose the common touch,” she added.

Of the Udecott appointment, Mc Kenzie said, “If she goes in there, she will get the whole picture, study it and call the board. She ent toeing no line that she doesn’t agree with.

“She will give it her best shot, but if there are too many unnecessary stumbling blocks she will leave it alone. She gone,”she said with a laugh.

Mc Kenzie said John was one of several Charlotteville residents who had distinguished themselves nationally and was honoured at a reception on January 24.

Pathologist Dr Eslyn Mc Donald Borris and Senior Counsel Amelia Carrington, of the Unit Trust Corporation, were also honoured for their contribution.

“Charlotteville has given a lot of top people to the country,” Mc Kenzie said.

After the UNC lost office, John left politics, opting for a life away from the glare of public scrutiny.

She joined the private sector in yet another high-profile portfolio as chief executive officer of the Pizza Boys Group and had set the company on a growth path.

But, as fate would have it, John has now returned to public life and can be considered to be in the hot seat at Udecott, a company that remains at the heart of national debate and controversy.