Camille Taylor, Contributor
Rosalie Goodman - File
Approaching every challenge with a sense of fearlessness, Rosalie Goodman has lived numerous lives, had several careers and believes she'll probably have a few more. Life's adventures have taken her from Jamaica to the USA, Britain, Europe and back home as she worked, studied and explored the "great, big world" that has fascinated her since childhood.
When The Gleaner sat down with her, she took us on a fascinating journey as she recounted the experiences that have shaped her into an accomplished landscape artist, passionate educator, resort manager and successful business-woman. Alongside her husband, the celebrated architect Marvin Good-man, she has built an architecture firm that can count five-star resorts, educational institutions and national establishments, among its clients.
Marvin D. Goodman & Associates has managed the design and development of numerous high-profile projects, including the Errol Flynn Marina in Port Antonio, the Club House at the Ritz-Carlton and the Hibiscus Suites at the Half Moon Hotel, both in Montego Bay, the Jencare Day Spa on Hope Road, the PCJ Building in New Kingston and A.Z. Preston Hall at the University of the West Indies, Mona.
Keen business sense
As the firm's chief administrator, Rosalie has blended her keen business sense with her husband's architectural vision and skills to successfully execute these projects. Not bad for someone who will readily tell you she didn't have the slightest interest in business or management.
"The idea of being in business was never in any of my projections," she told The Gleaner.
Rosalie quickly realised some-one had to keep an eye on the balance sheet.
"If you want to do good architectural work, you can spend a huge amount of time to make it right, so Marvin needed somebody with a business sense to work with him, so even though it's not my chosen profession, I've done it out of a sense of self-preservation," she explained.
Winning formula
By combining their respective strengths, the Goodmans have developed a winning formula, which has served them well for more than 30 years. The firm has received several prestigious awards, including the Musgrave silver medal from the Institute of Jamaica, an Award of Excellence from the Incorporated Masterbuilders Association of Jamaica and the Governor General's Award for Excellence in architecture, Jamaica's highest architectural honour. Their work has also been featured in renowned publications such as Architectural Digest, Progressive Architecture, MACO and Jamaica Architect.
In all of this, an unexpected spin-off for Rosalie has been the forging of a successful career in landscaping.
"Marvin likes his buildings to be seen through trees and vegetation, so after he did a building, he would tell me, 'Too much concrete, lush it up'," she recalled.
Rosalie's lifelong love of art and the years she had spent working on her own yard and gardens unwittingly prepared her for taking on this new challenge.
"I learned landscaping working on my own house and I didn't even know I would use the knowledge again."
That knowledge has since been brought to bear on several of their firm's projects.
Fortuitously, it was the Goblin Hill Villas project in Port Antonio that spawned yet another career for Rosalie, this time in hospitality management. In the late 1960s, the Goodmans built the resort in collaboration with two partners, but when it ran into financial problems just two years after it opened, Rosalie knew she had to step in.
"I felt I had to stand by the project, so I had to learn the hotel business and I have stayed with it ever since through ups and downs. Again, it's the story of my life; I had to learn something new and I applied myself to it."
Her willingness to take on new challenges is something that Rosalie attributes to her early-childhood education. When she was three years old, she was enrolled in small school where she was taught by a New Zealand woman stranded in Jamaica during World War II.
"It was the kind of early education that creates a very independent person and ensures that the child becomes very self-sufficient and is always able to fall back on their own resources. I was there from the age of three to about five and a half and later I realised this is what made me very self-motivated," she said.
Curious about the world
After graduating from high school, she went to Alabama College in the United States to study languages, but soon found that the sleepy community where the school was located could not hold her interest. Curious about the wider world, she moved to France where she became an au pair.
Five decades later, the joy is still evident in Rosalie's voice as she recounts her experiences in that country. Every aspect of life in France delighted her, from classes at the Sorbonne to her job looking after two children; from afternoons at the Eiffel Tower to trips to the lakes of the French Alps.
After a brief stint in England, she worked at a travel agency, which took her to Spain where she would take English tourists across that country and over to France. While in Spain, she took a diploma course at the University of Barcelona. However, eventually she had to confront the reality that all the classes she took in the US, France and Spain "still didn't add up to one degree". She returned home, read for a degree in languages at the University of the West Indies, while teaching swimming to support herself.
Ironically, it was her proficiency as a swimming teacher that brought Rosalie to the attention of Jamaica's Jewish community, and in the late '60s they asked her to take charge of Hillel, a very small infant school they were in the process of starting. Rosalie, who was now married but not yet fully immersed in business, took the school to another level.
"They figured we would just get a few kids together and keep them entertained and then send them off to prep school but I took it very seriously and I decided to research what the ideal education should be like," she said.
Armed with this knowledge, Rosalie wrote a handbook that she believed brought together the most effective methodologies, philosophies and approaches for the delivery of effective education. Rosalie confessed that she was "scared to death" that her methods would not work.
As it turns out, those fears were unfounded and Hillel, which opened in 1969 with six children, soon saw its student population grow to 250. By 1978 when she joined her husband in starting his own firm, the institution had expanded to a full prep school.
More than 20 years later she returned to the classroom - at Jamaica House Basic School. Marvin was the chairman and the school was experiencing serious problems, so Rosalie offered to help. What originally began as part-time consultancy was soon competing strongly with the family business for Rosalie's attention. For nine years she worked closely with the students, teachers and the parents, utilising the same methodologies that had been successful at Hillel to revamp the curriculum.
Rosalie now plans to write a book on early childhood education that goes beyond the ideas and methodologies that she covered in her original handbook.
"It will deal with early childhood education for the First World and Third World, and show that similar methods will work in either environment.
"I know that for a fact, because what worked at Hillel also worked at Jamaica House Basic School," she asserted.
She also wants to spearhead the design and construction of swimming pools in inner-city areas, a project she believes has tremendous potential for enhancing quality of life.
"The pool would be the place where the children could spend their days in the summer, and we would design them with lawns and trees to make the whole area inviting, so even the elderly ladies in the community will want to put on their swimsuits or shorts or just sit with their legs in the water and splash themselves on a hot day," Rosalie explains.
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Students watch a video at Hillel Academy in Cherry Gardens, St Andrew. Rosalie Goodman helped develop Hillel Academy in its formative years; now it has evolved into a creditable upscale high school. - Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
