The psychology of Jackie Jacqueline Jackson
Published:Sunday | December 10, 2023 | 12:07 AMShanel Lemmie - Staff Reporter
Over the past year, Jackie Jacqueline Jackson has made significant strides in promoting and investing in the film, animation, and music sectors as the film commissioner.
With her stellar reputation and 15 years of experience in the industry, Jackson is ideally suited for the task. In addition to this role, which she never knew she wanted, Jackson is also the founder of Ideate, a media consultancy firm. Additionally, she is a colouring book author, university lecturer, and TV show creator and producer.
Taking a look at how she manifested her every dream, Jackson says her life has been a story of overwhelming preparation and just enough luck.
Thinking back to her beginnings in Manchester with the fondest smile, Jackson describes her early life as beautiful.
“It was beautiful,” she began, “It was filled with community. I grew up in the church with my mom on the choir as deaconess, my father played the instruments and I think I found my identity at church. Now, I look back and I’m like ‘oh my God’. Every Sunday I was reading a Bible verse so the fears that most people would have I don’t have those because I had the full backing of my parents.”
Always in her corner through every transition, Jackson’s parents were her biggest cheerleaders – until she made the daunting decision to study journalism at the tertiary level instead of law.
Getting the call that she had passed the revered CARIMAC entrance exam on her graduation day from Glenmuir High School, she recalls her whole family overcome with joy, except for her father.
“Everybody was like ‘oh my God we’re so proud’, but my father was like ‘eeheeh yuh lucky. You better pay for that’,” she recalled.
Convinced that his daughter had thrown away her bright future and would never get the chance to ‘read news’ as she had hoped, he resigned her to a life as a prospective bank teller.
This however did not deter Jackson, “I think that would have been discouraging for other people. But, that was just like motivation to me. Laughing at the memory she recalled her response of ‘Weh him say? Watch me’.”
“I understood because I was doing something different. I still see it now where parents want their kids to be doctors and lawyers. It has changed now, social media and even just COVID has really changed learning. From STEM programmes to STEAM. Then, I got it and it didn’t hurt me. I just understood that I was smarter than him. You need to be smarter than your parents because that’s what they want for you. They have invested in you hoping that you will go to college and have degrees. The things I have achieved they didn’t achieve so I understood it, I respected it and he made me better for that,” she told The Gleaner.
Taking that challenge on the chin, Jackson did not wait until after graduation to prove her father wrong. While still in her second year of her degree, she became the youngest production assistant at the time to be hired at Television Jamaica.
Not stopping there, Jackson went on to get her master’s degree in film from Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York, which led to opportunities at BET’s 106 and Park as well as Comedy Central before taking the plunge into creating her own consultancy business.
“Deep down I just love learning. Deep down that’s who I am. I love learning and I love learning about people and I want to be better for me and my people. It’s like passion and purpose colliding. So I know I’m creative and I know I want to give back but I also know that I need to get better and I need to be more informed, and I need to be educated, so that change can happen.”
Now as a entrepreneur and a creative, Jackson says passion is paramount.
“I transitioned because of fulfilment. You have to feel it and you have to want to do it because it is harder to work for yourself and be an entrepreneur than it is to work for somebody else.”
She continued, “To be a creative and to be an entrepreneur is very difficult and a lot of creatives struggle with being a business. But I am a business and I am a businesswoman but I wouldn’t know that if I didn’t see it in real life and real time while living in New York.”
Crediting both her mother, Gloria, and the places and spaces where she has been planted to bloom, Jackson is looking forward to enjoying the public’s reaction to the latest season of her show ‘The Psychology of’ while setting her sights on a PhD in Psychology from Harvard University.