Ann-Marie Green – Seeking to empower women

ANN-MARIE Green is energetic, tenacious, driven, focused, determined, fun-loving and passionate about seeing people be their best selves.

“Things will hit you, but what do you do? If you sit in it you don’t get anywhere. You get up, fight it and move on,” she told

All Woman.

Green, 37, was born in Spanish Town, St Catherine, but relocated to Riley River, Hanover at age seven with her father and stepmother.

For her, this experience would bring a series of challenges that would later help her become the pillar of strength she needed to be to survive.

“I ran away from home three times because my stepmom was physically abusive. I ended up in a children’s home in Trelawny — Granville Place of Safety. There, the superintendent thought I was bright and made arrangements for me to go to the Lady Musgrave Home in Kingston and that burnt down a few months after I got there. I was then transferred to Glenhope Place of Safety on Maxfield Avenue and also with a foster family at one point,” she explained.

This experience, according to Green, was bittersweet, as she knew she did not fit the description of an at-risk youth or troubled child, but she said at the same time she knew she was not an angel, or else she would not have been there.

Green said it then meant that she had to learn about herself, how strong she was, and develop a strategy to survive.

“My relationship with God kept me going. They say train up a child in the way he should grow and when he’s old he will not depart from it. So it got stronger. I just couldn’t understand what was going on. I was young and forced to grow up. I had a conversation with God and said if you change things, this is what I’ll do, and that kept me grounded.”

And so, after leaving high school and going on to West Indies College, Green dreamt of having her own family, something which she said provided some sense of normalcy.

But the true test came after her marriage of nine years failed and sent her into a direction which has since charted the course for her life.

“It’s never easy, especially when you get old without even knowing what you want out of life. I got married thinking it would be my sense of normalcy and this person would be the knight in shining armour we all dream of. But that was not the case, so we went on different paths. He chose another direction and because of my unmet expectations, it floored me. I wasn’t physically abused, but the emotional stress was too much. So I left and went to study psychology and counselling and human resources at the Caribbean Nazarene College in Trinidad,” she said.

“It was here that I was forced to come to terms with my own demons and struggles. I had had to deal with depression and miscarriages. I used to bottle things up and physically it affected me. I did a course called Psychology of Personal Adjustment and in one class you had to write your epitaph. So I drew my headstone and wrote what people would say about me on my passing. I felt I had failed at everything. I’d been married for nine years — no kids. People had started to say I was barren. My ex-husband seemed to be doing well at life, and I seemed to be stuck in a rut. Now I was in a foreign country, couldn’t pay tuition or support myself financially. It was stressful. So I called my counsellor, bawled, and said I was done, I cried ‘cree’,” Green said.

But during this difficult time she realised she needed one thing to succeed, and decided that she was not leaving Trinidad without a degree. As a result, she drew on her inner strength and pushed through against the odds.

Now Green is the group human resource manager at Progressive Grocers of Jamaica Limited, and manages a staff of 1,700 spanning over 22 locations island-wide, and serves as consultant in human relations for the independent stores in the group.

Also, she currently serves as a special counsellor to the Saving and Transforming At Risk Youth (STAR) Programme — a one-week summer day camp which is a joint venture with Church on the Rock Jamaica and the Community Safety and Security Branch of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

She is also a motivational speaker, worship leader, advocate, policy writer, training and development officer, diet consultant and weight loss coach, volunteer to the Hanbury Children’s Home in Mandeville, and a make-up artist.

Green is also set to deliver a motivational speech about ‘getting noticed in the workplace’ at the upcoming Smart, Fabulous and Single Conference on October 29 at Campion College, which is geared towards the empowerment of single women.

“The goal is to give single women an experience that is empowering, meaningful and aspirational and to speak it into their lives. The target audience is women who are unmarried, divorced or separated. Women are addicted to self-improvement and are always seeking out activities and ideas to help them improve, and this is one of them,” she said

Green is also poised to complete her post-graduate diploma in human resource management to then move on to her doctoral studies.

She enjoys going to the beach and travelling and holds firm to a quote by Maya Angelou that says,“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour, and some style.”

“I don’t play the damsel in distress. I want women to be empowered, assertive and confident in who they are,” she said.