IWD 2022: Marilyn McDonald – At the helm of JPS’ community renewal push

DOING things differently and making the new approach successful can be extremely daunting. Marilyn McDonald has successfully navigated such a situation at the helm of the Community Renewal Department at JPS, an arm that has been doing things very differently.

“At the inception of the Community Renewal Department, it wasn’t something many persons thought would be successful or the approach possible. Some believed that those within the communities with which we were seeking to engage were not interested in paying bills at all,” McDonald shared. However, the varied experiences she has had with communities, and the successes and growth of the department, have already shown that those impressions were based on limited considerations.

McDonald places importance on being there emotionally for her team at work. Guided by principles of fairness and commitment, she believes that a combination of courage, resilience and empathy, helps to meaningfully engage with people and communities.

“My vision for us is that we be seen as transforming lives. I’d like people to be excited that JPS Community Renewal is coming into their communities, not only for electricity regularisation, but to influence positive lifestyle changes. These changes include an improvement in the bill payment culture, while contributing to the safety of the communities and children.Who is Marilyn McDonald?

A very passionate and committed person, she operates based on a number of guiding principles — fairness and honesty being two. These were qualities her parents, who are educators, lay preachers and Christians, instilled in her and her five siblings growing up in Alexandria, St Ann. Admitting to sometimes missing the innocence of childhood and having no bills to pay, McDonald described her childhood as having been a happy one.

Being actively involved in church, practising daily meditation and devotion, listening to good music, watching movies, reading and keeping up with current affairs, maintaining a gratitude journal, exercising regularly and chilling with family, McDonald admits that it took some time to get better at achieving a sense of balance. In addition to those activities, she loves netball. She was a member of her high school’s netball team and later the JPS netball team. She still plays the sport. The birth of her daughter, whom she considers the most important aspect of her life, contributed to a change in how she views life and her priorities, leading to the greater balance she sought.

She is an alumna of St Hilda’s Diocesan High School in Brown’s Town, St Ann, and attained both a business administration diploma in finance and a bachelors in business administration, majoring in management, from the University of Technology (UTech), Jamaica. She also received her Master of Business Administration degree from the University of New Orleans and has certification in project management. McDonald is keen on human resource development and is a certified trainer in the empowered entrepreneur training programme, designed by Johns Hopkins University and Winrock International, USA.Journey at JPS

McDonald’s journey at JPS began in 1992 as a collections clerk at the Spanish Town customer service office, handling debt settlement. One may say this was a precursor to her instrumental role in loss reduction at the company. Since then she worked in numerous positions before becoming the community renewal manager. She was a customer service representative and supervisor; customer service manager; revenue controller; parish manager; and manager of support services — focusing on large accounts, logistics, analytics and a bit of loss reduction in this post. McDonald described being parish manager for Portland as one of the most rewarding of her previous roles. In that position she was exposed to, not just the in-office customer service aspects of the job, but the operations or technical aspects as well. She cherished being in the communities and interacting with customers in their spaces, and seeing the benefits of work done in the field first-hand. Under her leadership the parish was awarded the Top-Performing Parish title on several occasions.

Her real immersion in the loss reduction area began in 2010 as part of the newly formed Technical Audit-Revenue Control Department. This position brought with it very novel experiences. One of these occurred when she went into Tivoli Gardens shortly after the 2010 incursion, as part of a JPS team offering new energy solutions to regularise communities with high irregularities. Although her presence was initially intended to provide customer service support, the need for a more comprehensive and engaging approach became clear to her. This programme saw JPS exploring a new approach, to include providing house wiring assistance as a means of onboarding customers.The Community Renewal Department and some of its successes

The year 2015 gave birth to the Community Renewal Department, which McDonald was asked to lead. It was a formalisation of a reimagined approach to regularising customers through stakeholder and community engagement, capacity building, and social intervention initiatives.

“We contribute to the increased financial viability of the company, with more customers being on the grid and less outages occurring due to illegal connections. Our aim is to provide an energy solution for every Jamaican,” she shared proudly.