IWD 2021: Juliet Holness – Challenge accepted

JULIET Annmarie Holness never felt ashamed when her schoolmates saw her selling clothes and shoes in Spanish Town with her mother in the evenings. Back then she was Juliet Landell, an industrious and thrifty student of St Catherine High, who was too busy learning the ropes of the business to care what her peers thought of her.

“My mom and dad earned an honest living, and that is what was sending me to school,” she told All Woman. Her father, who became a taxi operator after the zinc factory where he worked closed down, soon invested more in his wife’s business, allowing the family to travel to the Falmouth market where sales were better. There Juliet discovered her love for figures, and decided that she would pursue a career in accounting.

She was also a practical child. She decided after leaving fifth form that she would sit her ‘A’ levels at Wolmer’s Girls, because there was no accounting teacher at her school at the time. Constantly motivated by her mother’s advice that education and hard work was her ticket to a better life, Holness ensured that she went off to work every summer while she read for her first degree at The University of the West Indies, Mona. She was sheltered from the harsher realities that many women face in professional settings until she began working.

“As a child, I never had a sense of any disparity or inequity in how women and men function, because my mother was a strong woman, and they gave in equal ways to the partnership of taking care of and raising the family, and funding our lifestyle,” she recalled. “Not until I went into the world of work did I realise that what I took for granted as a child. I felt that everyone saw women as equal and we had equal opportunities and people appreciated us for our brains. I discovered that it wasn’t so.”

Holness found that often, instead of being complimented on how bright, witty and capable she was (things she prided herself in), she would be told that she was pretty or beautiful. By the time she graduated and interviewed for her first full-time job at KPMG, the young auditor was no longer naive, but even more determined to show off her wit and skill.

“I was hired on spot. I was told to go outside, and given a file and put to work, and the rest was history,” she remembered. “I got a promotion about every six months, which was unprecedented, because I saw the company as my company. I was always very aggressive about collecting their money.”

Of course by then, the young woman was getting ready to marry one Andrew Holness, whom she had met at St Catherine High.

“I remember moving on to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in the same year that I got married — 1997,” she divulged. “It was a different experience, because it was a more structured environment, but it added to my own skills in terms of organising, planning, and the level of detail and structure that is required in terms of auditing any company. Again I moved up the ladder very quickly.”

When Holness left PWC as a senior auditor, her manager begged her not to go. But, being pregnant with her first son at the time, Holness knew that her work ethic would not allow her to relax during pregnancy if she remained. In an attempt to strike a good work and family life balance, she took an accounting job at the Jamaica Biscuit Company. She soon realised, however, that she was still the workaholic that she was trying so hard not to be. She decided to branch off on her own.

“A salesman who was contracted to the company at the time was retiring, and he said he had land in Barbican that he wanted to sell. I took all of my money and bought that piece of land and told myself that I was going to develop that piece of land,” she said, as if marvelling at her own spontaneity.

There were only two problems with that plan — she knew nothing at all about real estate development, and she had no more money to invest in the developing the land.

“But I figured with all the years I spent in accounting and auditing, and the skills I’d developed, that with research and hard work I could go for it,” she said determinedly. She began working as an accounting consultant, and that allowed her to simultaneously help the Government at the time to improve the accounting systems in the Ministry of Finance and get her business off the ground.

Holness built her foundation and steeled herself in the real estate industry quickly. Her hands-on approach, precisely calculated budgets and eye for detail earned her the respect of all those who worked with her.

“I didn’t have a challenge with the men,” she said. “The workmen didn’t curse around me, because they knew I didn’t use expletives. They would move away to smoke, they were very respectful, and they taught me what they knew. I can lay blocks, do plumbing, electrical work, everything. If something is out by a quarter of an inch I can tell you.”

During this time her husband was ascending in the Jamaica labour Party (JLP), and while Juliet was supportive and comfortable with the idea of serving as the wife of the prime minister, she never aspired to become more involved in politics than as a behind-the-scenes strategist within the party. But when the JLP candidate for the critical St Andrew East Rural seat resigned a few weeks before the election and names were being suggested to replace him, Juliet’s echoed the loudest.

“At the time I thought, ‘If we don’t win this election, then we really won’t have a chance to showcase what my Andrew Holness can do for Jamaica’. I also loved the constituency very much, and I didn’t have anything to lose, so I decided to give it my all,” she said.

She won by a margin of just over 650 votes that year in 2016, and proceeded to throw her efforts wholeheartedly into the constituency.

Having widened her margin of victory the second time around to almost 2,500 votes, Holness is still working hard to win the hearts of her constituents. Added to her responsibilities as newly appointed deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, and her official duties as wife of the prime minister, this can be a challenge, but it is a challenge that Holness has long accepted.

“There is inequality in politics, but we are thankful that over the last few years, women have been making strides and gaining support,” she said. “The men have been ahead of the game for years, so as women, we need to support and make room for each other, like the men have been supporting one another. We also need to push for equity, so women can have an equal opportunity to represent and participate in the development of Jamaica.”

And while she works doubly hard as a representative and businesswoman, Holness still tries to ensure that she does her best at being a wife and a mother. She will never forget when her older son Adam, then four years old, complained to her on the way to school one morning that she was always in a rush, and rushing everyone, and was not spending enough time with them.

“It pulled on the core of my heart, and I felt tears running down my face. I thought I had to find a different way to do things,” she said emotionally. Since then she has tried to prioritise, regardless of the number of items on her professional agenda, to make time for each member of her family.

With Adam now 18 and Matthew 16, Holness is pleased with the ilk of young men that they have grown into.

Holness doesn’t know where life will take her next, but she has overcome enough challenges in her lifetime to know that she has no reason to be afraid of what the future holds.

“Where I am today, from where I started, I owe it all to God, to my parents, and to the perseverance of working hard and being dedicated,” she said.

“I don’t want to see a world, or a Jamaica, where women cannot be appreciated for their intellect, their capability and their skill. We shouldn’t have to bring anything else to the table. Once women are treated equally, you are going to find that Jamaica is better for it.”