Dr Sandra Palmer-Peart A vision for excellence

DR Sandra Palmer-Peart has been the CEO of SSP Aptec Incorporated since October 1997, a position she excels in while still managing to maintain a balance between her professional and family life.

Peart, who started the business with only the savings from her bank account, says the many challenges she has overcome has given her the strength and determination to strive for anything she dreams up.

And with a note of caution to a generation which she says has a get-rich-quick mentality, she advocates instead a strong religious and family base, hard work and determination.

Today, Peart is both a highly-driven CEO and a serious academic. She runs SSP Aptec which specialises in information technology products, audio visual rental and sales, specialty coating and supplies and trucking. The company has expanded overseas with an office in the United States. Peart is also a lecturer at the Mona School of Business, where she teaches New Ventures and Entrepreneurship, and at Northern Caribbean University, where she lectures in the module Managing Organisational Behaviour. She is also a former lecturer at the University of Technology (UTech) and Jamaica College.

Still in her 30’s, Peart says she has “forever” been striving towards her visions, visions she had even after failing her first Common Entrance Exams (now GSAT).

A product of a little farming community called Topsham in Manchester, Peart was a dreamer, who would think about how she would become someone important, and make her mother proud.

Everyone thought the Coley Mountain Primary school student was ‘bright’, but on the day the Common Entrance results came out, she was in for her first disappointment.

“My name was not in the Gleaner and no matter how carefully or frantically I combed the fine print, no Sandra Marie Palmer was to be found,” she said . “That was my first real taste of disappointment. Little did I know there would be many more ahead.”

The following year she passed her exams for the Bishop Gibson High school for girls in Mandeville, and worked at passing every grade.

“I was obsessed with being on top to the extent that if I didn’t get the highest grade on a test I would withdraw and sulk,” she said.

However, the second disappointment came when she was passed over as head girl. “I thought I was going to be the head girl but I was the deputy,” she said. “It was a big thing to me. I still ended up being the valedictorian [though].”

After opting out of sixth form, and being rejected by the University of the West Indies (UWI) for want of A’Levels, Peart worked for a year before reapplying.

However, while in her first year in Actuarial Sciences during 1987-88, she failed “everything except Use of English and was asked to take a year off”. But through persistence, she instead got a transfer to the Faculty of Arts where she “found herself”.

“Learning became fun,” she said. “I started to shine.”

However in 1990, during her final year at the university, she was involved in a serious bike accident and was told she would not be able to walk again.

But Peart defied the odds.

“The accident defined a lot of things. I can walk but I have pins in my ankle. I almost had to sit out a year at UWI [so] I did my assignments at the hospital. I delayed my final operation until after exams so I could sit the exams,” she said.

And after graduating with honours from the UWI in 1991, she attended the Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida to do pursue her Masters in Business Administration between 1996 and 1997, and her Doctorate in Information Technology Management during 2000 and 2004.

In 1998, she was again passed up for a position. Though Peart was disappointed she got the courage to start her own company.

“While working at my last job before SSP Aptec, I was passed up for a promotion and I asked the Lord, ‘Why me again’. But maybe if I hadn’t been passed up I wouldn’t have started my own company,” she said. “Sometimes when you think the door is closed, it’s really open.”

Regarding finances: “I take a lot of calculated risks,” she said. “[But] sometimes your bankers don’t see what you’re seeing as an entrepreneur. They are a little more conscious. They want to creep when you want to gallop.”

Encouraging other entrepreneurs to “go for it”, Peart advises that “all it takes is a start”.

“Whatever you want to do you can make it happen if you believe,” she said.

Currently, there are three divisions of SSP Aptec, which includes SSP Aptec Trucking, SSP Aptec Information Technology and Audio Visual Solutions and SSP Aptec Coating and Supplies. Each division specialises in different areas.

Peart points to her parents’ influence, the church and strong family ties as things which keep her grounded.

“I had a very close family unit. I always had mom and dad there,” she said. “My mother was always there with me when I was studying for exams. I sat around the table studying and my mother would be around another table, not doing anything – just being there until I finished studying, while my father was the financial provider and spiritual head of the home.”

She added: “My two brothers, parents and myself went to church every Saturday and then on Sunday evenings and Wednesdays. We went to church everyday of our lifes. I was very active in the church. I think probably that’s where a lot of my leadership skills were developed because I got the chance to organise so many things, from concerts to functions to writing plays.”

Stressing that most young persons nowadays are not strongly involved in the church to their detriment, Peart said it’s this guidance that grounds you.

“A strong religious background really helps persons to be disciplined and focused. You get a lot of exposure to a lot of things early in your lives that probably you would not have gotten otherwise,” she said.

“Now when I look back I can see why maybe our generation is different. We had values. Even if we strayed off the straight and narrow we knew what is right. I think that’s what is missing now in families. The children are kind of on their own. The guidance is not there. Sometimes maybe they don’t even know that this is wrong and this is right.”

Peart is a married mother of an eight-year-old daughter. She is a member of the Rotary Club and volunteers to give advice students between high school and university. She is also one of the vice-presidents of the Jamaica Computer Society and plans to lecture a new MBA course at UTech in September.