3 Minute Briefing: Lisandra Rickards (MBA 2010)

*Originally published on March 1, 2018 in the Harvard Business School Alumni Magazine.

I had a strong sense when I was at HBS that the skills I learned there would have a bigger impact back home in Jamaica than if I stayed in the United States. I didn’t want to just take a job. I wanted to have tangible outcomes to my endeavors.

Jamaica is the largest English-speaking country in the Caribbean, with a relatively high number of universities. Recently, we’ve seen government embrace a policy of fiscal responsibility, which wasn’t true when I was growing up in the 1990s. There’s been a real change in philosophy, which entrepreneurship can build on.

The Branson Centre is an accelerator operating out of Kingston that helps entrepreneurs structure their businesses for scale, with the target outcome being external investment.

We still have a number of manual processes here, so we see a lot of scope for more and more businesses in Jamaica to become technology-enabled, particularly in health care, financial services, and agriculture.