Joan-Marie Powell
From her days as a star athlete at Immaculate Conception High School, Joan-Marie Powell knew what it was like to be a winner, and she enjoyed the thrill of it. That was three decades ago. Today, she is still a winner, having traded her spikes for cash first as a banker and now a top brass in the money transfer market.
Now executive director of Grace, Kennedy Remittance Services, Powell started her career at Citibank Limited, quite incidentally.
“After high school, I decided I wanted to work instead of heading off straight to university. I actually did one month of accounting at the College of Arts Science and Technology (now UTech) and dropped out. It was a little bit too serious for me at that time. I wanted to work, but I also wanted space to have fun,” Powell told All Woman sitting comfortably in her New Kingston suite.
She continued: “I was passing by Citibank one day with a friend and said to her on a whim, ‘let’s go in and see if we can get a job in that bank’ any job.”
A few weeks later Powell was on the teller line at the bank, learning the rudiments of a career she grew to love and enjoy. She spent 18 years with the bank, and worked her way up to the supervisory level, which was quite an achievement at that time.
With an executive masters in business administration, and a strong desire to go after “something new and exciting”, Powell made a decisive move, 10 years ago, to leave the confines of the bank. She was going into uncharted territory, but she was not daunted.
“I am a risk taker, and I love to feel the adrenalin pumping, so when the offer came to be a part of the pioneering team to set up the Grace, Kennedy Remittance Services, I accepted. From the beginning I knew that this company would go somewhere, so I took the plunge,” Powell told All Woman.
As operations manager, Powell’s job was to ensure that all systems were in place to effect the reliable and safe transfer of funds into Jamaica from the rest of the world.
She described the embryonic stage as “testing”. First, she was leaving friends and colleagues whom she “grew up with”. Then she was giving up the personal comforts and trappings that went with her job as a bank exec. Topping it all was the challenge of getting the system up and running in various locations across the island.
“There were eight of us in the company sharing a small office and a few desks and chairs far removed from what I had grown to accept in the banking environment. We had to do time-sharing, that is, when one person got up, another one would sit down, but we had faith in the product and we knew things would take off,” she added, oozing with confidence.
Within the first six years, Powell moved through the company from assistant general manager for Jamaica, to executive manager for Grace, Kennedy Remittance Services. She has assisted the company to extend its reach to every nook and cranny in Jamaica. She also supervises operations in Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and recently, Haiti.
“We have agents in all of these countries and they are all my responsibility. I do a lot of travelling within and between countries, but I make very good use of the information technology I have at my fingertips, and I have very good support staff,” Powell said.
One of her most significant achievements is the production of a training manual that was originally intended for operations in Jamaica, but which has been used in several countries at the start-up of their remittance businesses. Consequently, she was invited to make presentations as far afield as Australia, Africa and Europe.
“I am proud to say that we (in Jamaica) are world leaders with respect to money transfer, we have trained the rest of the world. One high point for me was the response I got in Morocco after making my presentation there. I was greeted with awe and got a standing ovation. That gave me a feeling of accomplishment,” she declared.
It is no surprise that Powell now sits as a member of the board of directors of Grace, Kennedy Remittance Services Ltd and Grace, Staff Community Development Foundation. Since March she has also been invited to the board meetings of Grace, Kennedy and Company Limited.
Described by her staff as “warm and all-embracing”, Powell is all for staff training and development. Every single member of staff, she says, is enrolled in some developmental training exercise, adding that continuous training and learning is the only way to move foward and to be competitive.
An active member of the St Thomas Aquinas Centre, Powell quietly gives a lot of her time and energy to charities within the church and community. She was instrumental in securing funds to assist Woman Inc set up new offices and put administrative staff in place.
“She is like a guardian angel. When we were looking for funding, she recognised the need and came to the rescue. The company also took on a three-year commitment to totally fund our administration,” said Joyce Hewitt of Woman Inc.
The proud piscean is mother to 19-year-old Chad Francis who is studying abroad. While she enjoys cooking and entertaining her friends, she does not intend to get married in the near future.
“I guess I am too set in my ways, and I still love to party, party and have fun,” she said.