It took more than six months for Clement “Jimmy” Lawrence to agree to be interviewed about aspects of his life as a man who rose from the bushes of South East St Ann to become honcho of one of Jamaica’s leading companies.

But once in his comfort zone, the modest and ‘spiritually’ inspired veteran manufacturer and scientist spoke about his progress over the last 40 years in the local workspace with a level of honesty that goes hand in hand with the way in which he managed his daily affairs — publicly and privately.

J Wray & Nephew was bought out by Italian firm Gruppo Campari in September 2012, and soon after, its principals inserted Lawrence, the first man of dark pigmentation in the company’s 190-year history, to run its operations as Managing Director, which he did for three and a half years, before being stepped up to Chairman six months ago.

It marked a historic milestone for someone, though not born into poverty, to run with the baton and reach the tape of success with precision.

Lawrence, now 60, was born at Iron’s Mountain, near Claremont — delivered by none other than Dr Ivan Stewart Lloyd, the former Member of the House of Representatives for St Ann Eastern, who served as Leader of the Opposition when Norman Manley, the founding President of the People’s National Party, lost in his bid to win the St Andrew Eastern seat in the 1944 General Election — the first time Jamaicans voted under Universal Adult Suffrage.

In fact, so ambitious were Lawrence’s parents that he ought to become a doctor, that one of his middle names is Lloyd, the other being Hugh.

After being successful in his Common Entrance examination, following coaching from three primary schools — Iron’s Mountain, Moneague, and Claremont — Lawrence enrolled at York Castle High School, Brown’s Town in adjoining St Ann North Western, despite having got through for Ferncourt High, also in the parish.

“I passed the Common Entrance for Ferncourt but my mom would have none of that. She said ‘You are going off to boarding school where you are going to learn to become a gentleman.’ My mom in her formative years was insistent on us growing up to be ladies and gentlemen. She even had an etiquette book and every Sunday morning she would subject us to that — a formally set table with serviette rings. So by the time I got big and saw people look confused about how to conduct themselves in a formal setting in a dining room, I didn’t have those problems because my mom did that,” said the second of four boys and one girl in the Lawrence family.

In the new environment at York Castle where John Paxton ruled the corridors as headmaster, Lawrence was soon to come across one of Jamaica’s leading educators in a cute way.

Burchell Whiteman, who later became Minister of Education and Jamaican High Commissioner to London, assumed office as headmaster, triggering countless comparisons with the student.

“There is this apparent resemblance between Burchell and myself, so there is always this light-hearted joke. I got lots of that at school. I don’t know what is it about the resemblance between himself and me, but something is there, maybe it’s the shape of the head, or the receding hairline.

“Even now when Burchell is on television people joke and call me to say I’m on tv. Even my daughters say ‘daddy you are on tv’, when Burchell is on.”

Lawrence’s story is not the typical rags to riches one. He did not come from humble beginnings — his father being a large-scale cattle farmer, landowner and shop operator, and worker at Reynolds Bauxite Company; and his mother ran the local post office. So, not knowing what it was to be hungry, nor be wrapped in clothes that needed any form of patching, there was even greater joy for the youngster upon his completion of studies at York Castle, as he received a bauxite scholarship to the University of the West Indies, Mona, where he read for a degree in chemistry.

“Initially, I was planning to do medicine, and then I went into the lab and saw part of a cadaver (or corpse) and I said that was it. It just came to me so clearly that this was not my calling. I was just doing it to please my mom.

“Once I got to know what was required, in terms of my qualification, I wasn’t prepared to do that. The other thing is after being subjected to boarding school, which was very rigorous, everybody was there — rich, poor, black, white, foreign, local, people speaking different languages. I remember I used to look across the hills from my bunk bed in the dormitory and wondering what I would do when I grow up. By the time I got to university I was ready to get over with this thing now.

“As I got into university, my dad sat me down and asked me to promise him a few things, among them that I would not smoke, and I have never smoked in my whole life; he said drinking … it’s not that you shouldn’t but if it gets addictive then that’s going to be a problem. I drink but I have never been drunk.

“And for the girls, he said, well it’s pointless me saying that but remember that you have things … and in those days you didn’t have AIDS, but there was gonorrhea, and syphilis and that left an impression on me. Having gone to boarding school and entered university I really wanted to get it over with. I was so eager about it too that I nearly messed myself up, because doing chemistry you used to have labs on a Saturday, starting at 9 o’clock and ending at 3 o’clock and I used to rush it through by skipping lunch and that messed up my stomach. In fact, years later I had to take Zantac and eat boiled chicken to try and bring back my stomach. That was a tough lesson,” Lawrence said.

Not one to play sport, due to an incident at York Castle in 1969 when a leather football found his face as the ultimate target which resulted in the smashing of his spectacles, Lawrence gave up the idea of becoming a brave goalkeeper, to focus squarely on academic work. It was only in his latter years that he took up tennis, which his mother had first introduced him to in his youth.

The search for a job in the private sector for the owner of a Bachelor’s degree in chemistry did not go as smoothly as he had anticipated, which led him into the classroom to teach at Calabar High School for three months, voluntarily, as he had never been paid due to glitches in the Government system at the time.

But by later 1978, an offer came from Colgate Palmolive, where he was to spend the next 18 years.

“It was schooling in itself,” Lawrence summed up the Colgate experience.

“I learnt a lot of the sound principles of becoming a manager, the importance of teamwork, getting along, and even my people skills. There was a lady who greeted me on the first morning when I was being introduced by the plant manager and she said, ‘You see all of you university graduates, you come here and think oonu have it all’. So I said I didn’t do anything to this lady, why is she attacking me, and so she went on pretty much for the whole day.

“I was telling my sister when I got home and said I was not going to tolerate this kind of treatment from anybody, so she sat me down and said ‘Let me tell you — this person X, there is one of them at every company and you gonna have to learn to live with that.’

“I really thought about it that entire weekend, so I said I’m gonna figure out how to get along with people and that was a turning point for me in terms of developing relationships with people, because what I realised is that every human being has his set of needs and objectives and if you don’t recognise those and treat with them in their terms, you are just not going to get along.

“That lady in the end became my best friend. If I were to be thrown out of my home for whatever reason, I could go to her house and she would put me up. That was one very important lesson for me.”

By 1994 it was time to pack his bags and go on another journey.

Colgate Palmolive had reconfigured its business and was moving its operations to other countries, among them Venezuela, Colombia, and the Eastern Caribbean.

Faced with the option of emigrating to the Eastern Caribbean, Lawrence decided that he would forego that in his quest to experience “a good local company.”

Not finding what he was looking for in some, he declined offers and eventually accepted one from a Lascelles deMercado subsidiary — Federated Pharmaceuticals — where he went as plant manager, thus beginning, in his own words, a new world for him in the Lascelles Group.

Stints at group companies Ad Chem as general manager, Plastic Containers Ltd and Lascelles Distributors, also as general manager, and his first foray into sales and marketing at Lascelles Wines and Spirits plunged the chemistry major into a different corporate culture, but one that he loved.

“The staff and I operated the company as if it were ours. We had that level of interest,” said the man who was part of the team that came up with the successful roots drink Magnum Tonic Wine, the label of which he personally designed.

“I remember we contemplated Vigorton Tonic Wine and said that sounded too much like medicine. So Paul Thomas came up with the name Magnum and we ended up talking about Magnum Tonic Wine, but would incorporate Vigorton in it to give it some credibility in terms of its intrinsic properties,” said Lawrence, who eventually became general manager for Lascelles Wines and Spirits.

That was only the appetiser for further things to follow.

“In 2008 Billy McConnell (then chairman) said he wanted me to go to J Wray & Nephew. I wasn’t a happy camper. I didn’t really like the culture then of J Wray & Nephew – I was not egocentric … it’s just not my nature. I actually pride myself in being an ordinary person. I don’t want to have guards around me and that sort of thing. I want to go into the supermarket and pick up yam if I want to and not looking around. That’s part of my passion.

“When he said that I said to myself, no I don’t want to do that, and I remember talking to my wife Monica, who has been a tremendous support for me over the years. And she said ‘Why not go? It’s advancing your career, you have nothing to lose, and in any event with your track record you have never really spent more than three years doing anything, so why not take it on.’ So I did, admittedly grudgingly, and some of my best years followed that, because to date that cadre of managers that I became associated with I will never forget that. These were guys who were talented, skilled, educated, and just needed looking at teamwork and expressing themselves in a different way. And I was asked to, of all things, head up sales and marketing — remember I did chemistry in university and I didn’t aspire to be any marketing person, and I still am not.

“But with teams … if you can build good, strong teams, empower them, support them, that’s really what you need to do. Who has skills in every discipline? Nobody.

“Every time you look at something and say that’s not my calling, it probably is something that you should do, because if you don’t at some point you are going to say now what if I had? And you don’t want to ask yourself that question. It’s better to pursue and fail, and chances are you won’t fail if you build good teams,” Lawrence reasoned.

Serving as Managing Director and Chairman come with their own requirements, Lawrence readily admitted.

“When I was MD there were a lot of challenges. I became MD with the acquisition by Gruppo Campari, which I did not aspire to, and didn’t imagine that I would become MD or Chairman of the company.

“When the principals came down from Italy they said they would want me to become managing director, and at first I was inclined to say no; in fact I pointed out to him that I would not be the right person, but then I heard the voice of Monica in the background and knew what she was going to say. She was going to say what do you have to lose, do you want to retire one day and say what if I was. So I said yes and was eventually confirmed as MD.

“We had a lot of challenges then because we had to merge with the Lascelles Ltd culture, which was different from the Wray & Nephew culture, and if it were not for the supporting teams, particularly human resource in making that happen, things could have been different.

“You want your team to believe in themselves, believe that they are not limited to any one thing. There is nobody in this company who is able to say I can’t be MD or chairman or any other position that can be obtained.”

Although he has achieved much in his corporate quest, there are still empty slots on his shelf waiting to land additional objectives.

“I have two girls, well three, including Monica. They are very entrepreneurial in nature and they aspire to certain things in business, and I want to provide them that opportunity to realise that and particularly when I retire I want to coach them more in that vein and to realise their own dreams. One of them is doing architecture, the other one is doing computer science, but they are both very entrepreneurial,” Lawrence revealed.

“In terms of other plans, being a scientist, I have inventions that I have logged. I have even filed for at least one patent in the US patent office, ideas that I have but when you get engrossed into working and being part of a team it just diminishes the available time and the drive to carry these things to an end. I think in my more relaxed years — retirement — these are some of the things that I would pursue more.

“I look forward to retiring … it’s another phase and I want to be closer to my kids and my wife to enjoy the fruits of our labour as much as possible,” he said.

As for Iron’s Mountain, Lawrence intends to continue a project that he launched to assist students in need.

Although he did not want to say too much on the subject, he has sponsored a girl and a boy, both of whom are making their way through two high schools in St Ann and have been doing well academically.

“I feel compelled to do that because people coming out of that community are just as capable as a kid from Norbrook.

“They look so bright; they look brighter than I ever was because I wasn’t a bright kid. There is so much hope for them and it would be a shame if they don’t have an opportunity to be the best they can be. I am just doing it because it makes me feel good,” he said.

And not wanting to make too light of the situation that he finds himself in — that of heading a company which is usually headed by personalities fairer in complexion — Lawrence said that it was not a big deal.

“It is a kind of achievement if you want to be honest, but it’s not about the shade of your skin. We should realise more that everybody is born equally capable and have potential and it’s in part due to how you express yourself and in part due, too, to the opportunities that people afford you. I was particularly lucky. Campari has been open to this kind of thing. They are genuine. Symbolically, it’s true, you have a 190-year-old company and you have an estate that is 260-odd years old. We know where that started and to see it now. That is in and of itself is something remarkable.

“For my teams, the young bright people, it’s about what’s possible for the entire team. It has not been without incident. I remember one day I was in the Pegasus and a friend of mine who is a very successful businessman we were talking and he said ‘Have you met so and so’, and I said no man, and he said ‘No man you need to know that man’.

“He beckoned to the gentleman to come over and started introducing me by saying ‘so and so this is Jimmy Lawrence, he is the MD for Wray & Nephew’, and the gentleman remarked ‘really.’

“I said to him, yeah, really. I was a little peeved about it, but it didn’t phase me because I know there are some people who will think, it’s out there. I wouldn’t say in general that has been it, but I’m sure there is a little of that out there. But we are bigger than that … we take the high road all the time and that’s where you will shine. You have to have a little toughness, but you have to be astute enough to recognise the fact of how certain people will think, because it’s a process of transition and who knows what tomorrow brings?” Lawrence said.