‘WE LIKKLE BUT WE TALLAWAH’ KINGSTON SUPERGIRL AT THE HELM OF MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR US CORPORATION

If you live in the US or have visited the USA or Canada or even been exposed to American TV ads must have seen and heard about The Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer. You can’t help it; they are everywhere with over 2,200+ stores in all major towns and cities in the US, as well as in Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

And guess who is in charge of all of these stores and their almost 400,000 employees? Likkle Likkle Ann Marie Campbell from Kingston, Jamaica! How did she get there and be at the very top of this huge corporation with revenues many times the size of Jamaica’s entire annual GDP?

There was nothing spectacular in Ann Marie’s childhood and early development living in Jamaica. She went to Kingston’s Catholic Holy Childhood High School for Girls right there in Half Way Tree when Holy Childhood still had boarders. How many people today know about that?  Ann Marie herself would not claim to be a particular standout at school but she cant help remembering having to be awake and up at 6.a.m. for mass every morning – a practice and discipline that has had a major positive influence on her later development and her life in general.

But if the Holy Childhood boarding experience prepared her for a disciplined life and for learning to live with others, it was the influence of her grandmother who partially raised her and at whose furniture and appliance store in Morant Bay St Thomas she worked during school holiday breaks that was to be the most critical factor in her life’s journey. That real journey began in 1981 when at the age of 16 she migrated to the US with her mother and brother. Her undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Georgia State University gave no inkling of what her future career path would be because from as early as 1985 she had started working at the Home Deport as a part-time cashier to help her way through college. But Ann Marie so distinguished herself by her customer friendly disposition, intelligence and strong work ethic, she made steady progress upwards on the Home Depot management ladder that by the time she earned her MBA also from Georgia State her inevitable rise to the top of that organization was already assured. 

Before her 50^th birthday she was already being included in Fortune’s 50 ‘Most powerful women in business’ and it came as no surprise when in January 2016 exactly one generation after arriving in the USA she was catapulted to the head of one of the largest corporations with her appointment as Executive Vice President for US stores.

There are many stories to be learned by young Jamaicans in the Diaspora and also at home in Jamaica from Ann Marie Campbell’s experience. Chief among them is the value of a Jamaican upbringing. In a 2014 interview with Gleaner writer Robert Lalah, Ann Marie made reference to the competitive school system at Holy Childhood which pushed her to excel. And in her interactions with fellow Jamaican employees when she visits Home Depot stores she is quoted as saying:

“ I tell them that the person I am today is 1,000% because of my upbringing and the Jamaican values that were instilled in me. “ In that same Gleaner interview, she had the following advice for persons who have migrated or contemplate migrating to the US:

“ The environment you create when you go to the States is going to be very important. Don’t expect it to be like Jamaica.Its not. But you have to learn to focus on opportunities and not challenges. Take all that you have learnt in Jamaica and apply it.” Sound advice indeed!

One of Ann Marie’s most enduring qualities is her unselfishness. She told Lalah: “I try to help people be the best they can be” echoing the advice of her Grandmother which has remained her guiding principle that “whatever you do, do to the best of your ability.”  She admits that one of the favourite parts of her job is doing store visits because it gives her the opportunity to find the next Ann Marie. In her own words “ I look for people who have the will, the energy and the smarts and help them in any way I can.”

Ann Marie Campbell is an American citizen with a Jamaican husband and two children but her love for Jamaica has not diminished. “I love Jamaica dearly. The food, the atmosphere, everything. I cherish my Jamaican roots.”.  

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