Passing the Baton: Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce on Inspiring the Next Generation

Makhtar Diop: Welcome to Creative Development with IFC. I'm Makhtar Diop, Managing Director of the International Finance Corporation. Today, my guest is Honorable Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. She's the most decorated 100-meter sprinter in history and one of the most celebrated athletes of all time. Shelly-Ann recently retired from professional track and field after an extraordinary two decade career, but her legacy extends far beyond the finish line. She's the founder of the Pocket Rocket Foundation, which supports student athletes in Jamaica, and the creator of a haircare brand that celebrates Jamaican heritage.  

 

I'm a big fan of Shelly-Ann, and I must confess, what you don't know, guys, is that I'm a big track and field fan. Let me remind some people who are not track and field fans like I am, who is Shelly-Ann? She has eight Olympic medals, 17 Championship medals, five world titles in the 100m sprint, not to mention relays and the 200 meters.  

 

Shelly-Ann has something which is quite interesting. She's a pure product of the school system in Jamaica, which has produced so many champions. So tell us a little bit about how that system has made you the champion that you are today, and how you have decided to build your Foundation and give back to those children who are young athletes at school? 

 

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce: My mom actually ran in high school. That's where I got my speed from. So my mom was an athlete, and growing up, my mom got pregnant when she was still in high school with my brother, and then along came me two years after that, and then my little brother two years after me. So I grew up in one of the, you know, inner cities in Kingston, and it was very hard for us. We lived in what was called a tenement yard. So it was a lot of our families that live in one, you know, yard, space or home. And it was hard for us to see what's next. And my mom would always say to me that, you know, you have a gift, you know, you're talented. Track was going to be my vehicle to the next level. And you hear it, but the reality is you're not seeing the dream around you. She's telling you one thing, but the reality is you're in a poor environment. You're not seeing you know, your way out. But then I went to school. I went to George Headley Primary, before I went on to Wolmers. And if anybody can tell you anything about Jamaicans when it comes to sports, track and field, you name it, we are competitive as a country. Our high school programs are very competitive. And you find that if you want to excel, you'd have to understand that you have to do the work because talent…we have talent here, there’s no question about it. We have the talent here. But it's about making sure that you have the right tools to get you to the next level. It involves hard work, having the right support. And you can imagine, for a young girl like me, struggling with identity, struggling with self esteem, struggling with so many things, it was hard. But then, when I went to high school, I met a woman who was the president of the Wolmer’s Old Girls Association. And she saw more in me.  

 

She gave me the opportunity to not think about school, to not think about where my uniform would come from. She gave me the opportunity to not think about where my books would come from. So I had the responsibility of focusing on track and focusing on school and pairing both things to, you know, just give me an advantage. And I remember at first I was like, I don't like people pitying me. And my grandmother would always talk about pride. You know, the Bible talks about pride going right before a fall and that sometimes when we're in need, we see that we're in need, but we're so prideful in not accepting that help. But she gave me that help. She gave me that support, and the school supported me. So many individuals around me really poured into to me, just telling me that there's more to come.  

 

And that's really the idea behind the Pocket Rocket Foundation. It's about me using the help and the support that I had to basically build a ladder for the next generation. Because if this is how I made it I'm giving you the same opportunity to have the same journey and to use it to the best of your advantage. So that's how we formed the Pocket Rocket foundation. This idea of just running and getting medals and, you know, getting success - success is not just for us. It's for those who we inspire. It's for those who are walking alongside us on our journey, who see us and say, oh, I want to be like her, to get an opportunity to not worry about the books, to not worry about, how am I going to pay my tuition? How am I going to get food? But instead, I want you to take everything that is within you, to have the discipline, the right mindset, and to channel that God- given gift that you have to work hard at your sport and in school, and pair both things and create an avenue that you will excel for yourself. 

 

Makhtar: One thing I would like to thank you - and I know the people of Jamaica are thanking you for that - is your personal involvement after the hurricane. Tell us what has motivated you to play such a big role in answering to this catastrophe that Jamaica has faced. 

 

Shelly-Ann: Thank you, Makhtar. Hurricane Melissa happened and while for a lot of us could not have predicted what would have happened - we hear about a category five hurricane, and we're like, all right, we've never experienced one before - but I can tell you when we saw the after effect, when we saw the houses, when we saw the roads, when we saw, you know, businesses being closed, schools being closed, people losing their livelihood, it is only a matter for us to think about community and how we recover together. So as much as I am an athlete that competes on the track, off the track, I am a Jamaican, you know, I'm a mom, you know, I'm a neighbor, I'm everything here, and it's only right that we step in and to help them to get to rebuild what they have. And for me, through the Pocket Rocket Foundation, our main focus is student athletes, their families and communities and school by extension. So we're able to go on the ground. Its all of us that will have to pitch in and to make sure that our country gets back, you know, standing and if it's one thing that this has taught us is that we all have a role to play in the recovery. So as usual, the Pocket Rocket Foundation has been on the ground, and we're helping to move forward, getting our kids back in school, getting care packages, to, you know, to families and to communities. Because the reality is, yes, we're a charity, but right now, it's not about charity. It's about community and how we come together as Jamaicans to make sure that our brothers and sisters are making ends, and they're getting back to what they're used to. 

 

Makhtar: There's something you know, which is quite impressive in you: the way you handle pressure. Throughout your career - you know, when people are stressed, people do trash talking, all these kind of things. You’ve kind of always been above all this, and don't seem to be to be touched by all these things that you see in the in the sports industry, where people can trash talk, make some noise, which is not necessarily positive, or get too nervous once they get to competition. You finish your race, you smile as you just came out from a supermarket.   

  

Shelly-Ann: Ultimately I would like think that it's my faith. You know, my grandmother nurtured that faith from when I was very small. I had like no choice but to go to church on a Saturday with my grandmother. So I would have to say my faith. Every season carries with it a lot of different things, the highs, the lows, pressure, self doubt, and I experience those things. But the reality is having the right people in your corner...   

 

Makhtar: No, no It’s not as you say, that its only about the right people! You have something special, because other athletes also had that support!  

 

Shelly-Ann: I’m competitive! I don't like to lose. I don't like losing. I don't like feeling like, I didn't do my best. For me as an athlete it doesn't matter what the result is going to be. I am giving you 100% at all times. I'm standing at the line at all times. Because the reality is, it's only in the start, that we know how we finish. That's just the reality. We only know it that way. And to be honest, how I grew up also played a role in that I had to fight for myself. I had to really dig deep. I had to want it for myself.  

And you know, you hear people say, Oh, nobody's going to save you. Yeah, I had that growing up. I felt like, Okay, I have to get myself out of this environment, or nobody else will.  

 

I'm very grounded, because I know what I want, and I say to myself, the I go to training, it's about me. I have to do the work. Nobody's forcing me to go to do the work. When I step to the line and I'm thinking about the success or I'm thinking about the outcome, the only person that can guarantee that success is the work that you do. Let the work that you do be your strength. Let the work that you do give you confidence.  

 

Makhtar: This is fantastic. I think this is not a lesson in sports that you have just given. It’s a lesson about life, its about business. And we will talk about business later, because now you have shifted to be a business woman. Actually, when I talk to people in our world of business, of development about motivational skills and leadership, I say just go to high level sportsmen or coaches. These people know how to motivate a team, are resilient, know how to set goals and they deliver.  

 

But you know you are a good representative of the Jamaican women, who are very determined women, and who have achieved so much. [In] 2017 you decide to be a mother. At that time everybody said, her career is done. And you say, no my career is not done. I will be a mother. I will come back and do it. And since then, you inspired a lot of people. You inspired Alison Felix, Shaunae Miller, Faith Kipyegon – so now you have the top athletes in the world who have become mothers and demonstrated that being a mother is not something which is not compatible. Tell me, when it happened in 2017, did you have any doubts or did you say it will happen and I will make it and no worries. 

 

 Shelly-Ann: When I got pregnant with my son, I was nervous, because you don't hear about women returning to high-level sprinting after having a baby, let alone turning 30, because I turned 30 the December of that year. And it was hard for me to sit and to think about becoming a mom and going back to sprinting. But the reality is, I knew I wanted to come back, like that was something that I knew from the get go, because I understood the importance of forging your own destiny and just really tapping into your own strength. And I've always been stubborn, like my teachers will tell you, or my mom or my brothers will tell it, I'm very stubborn. The moment I make up my mind and say, this is what I'm doing, you cannot change my mind. And that's the type of person I am, and that's the kind of strength and resilience that I had that really kept me going. So when I had my son you're not seeing a lot of moms around you. You're not seeing persons, you know, having kids and coming back and you're thinking about, okay, then what am I going to do? There's no real data that supports this, but that's not my job. My job is to do the work.  

 

My job is to believe in what I believe in and keep that belief. So I had my son and I knew I wanted to come back. And I heard people talk. I heard people saying, oh, you know, it's not possible for her to come back. But again, maybe because of how I grew up as well, I don't care what you think like what you think has nothing to do with me, because the moment I start thinking for you, then I drown my own voice out. And I can't afford to drown the voice that is important to me, the voice that is okay, then the voice of reasoning that if I say I'm doing something, I'm doing it. I can't allow your doubts, your fear, to interfere with the ones I already have, because the reality is, I already have my own doubts and fear. But I'm not going to allow yours to stand on mine. So I knew I had to come back, and I wanted to come back, and I had a huge support.  

 

So I had my son, and funny enough, I had my son via C sections. I had a C section when I had my son. And that completely changed everything, because I had a plan. I was like, I'm going to have the baby and I'm going to get back to training at six weeks and I'm going to do this. And that never happened. I got back to training 11 weeks after having my son, and I remember going back to practice, and I took it a day at a time. I was like, all right, one day at a time. This is a time that you stay down, head down. This is a time that you, you know, when you talk about planting, this is the time you're planting because the harvest is coming. So I'm planting. I'm sowing good seeds and drinking my water. I'm doing my exercise. I'm going to Pilates. I'm doing the extra work, because I know what it will require of me.  

 

I'm also a mom, and I wanted to make sure that I'm intentional about being a mom, because it's important for me to balance being a mom and being a sprinter. Too often people tell women what they can do or what they cannot do, or they think that motherhood somehow diminishes who you are as a woman, but it's not. It adds to who we are. It adds layer to us as women, shows our strength, shows our impact, shows who we are in our entirety. And I don't want to have to choose. And I think for a lot of people, they think they have to choose, but why not have it both ways? Some days it's not easy, and that's okay, don't be hard on yourself. And I had to learn that, because I'm always hard on myself. I'm like, a little perfectionist. I want to get it right, because the reality is, when you run 100 meters, you have no room for error. The person who gets it right gets it right. And I want to get it right, because I'm already starting behind the eight ball in the sense that from the technical aspect, I didn't start out being technically correct, so I had to learn and relearn, you know, sprinting. So it's harder for me, so I have to make sure that when I get to train, I have to be intentional about the things that I do at training. 

 

So when I realized, okay, I'm being a mom, and I'm having my baby, and I'm breastfeeding, and I'm going to training, and I'm coming home, and I'm up at night. I have support, and I love the support, because my husband gave me lots of support, and I love the fact that he trusted my decisions, and that's important, and that gave me confidence. Those things gave me confidence. When people around me who I trust to just give me sound advice, they trust my dreams. They trust what I'm saying. They trust my word.  

 

And so I realized I'm coming back. You know, it's not easy, it's doable, but the next woman is depending on me for it to work. She's depending on me to understand that girl, if you want to go start a family, go, if you want to run at 30, go. She's depending on me. And the reality is, I depend on a lot of women to do what they do. Merlene Ottey, you talk about Juliet Cuthberg, you talk about so many other different women who laid the foundation for what we did. 

 

And I came back and I ran the fastest I've ever ran in my entire career. I won medals after having my son. I stood on the podium after, you know, having my son, you know, I became a better athlete, a better woman, after I had my son. Motherhood doesn't diminish us, it's, you know, it elevates us. It allows us to think better, to understand that we have someone that's looking up to us, somebody that will inspire us and will lead by our inspiration. And I think that's what happened with my son. Because I knew it was important for me that when he reads this story, he understood that for mommy, Zion Pryce didn't stop me from doing what I needed to do. Zion Pryce helped me to do what I needed to do, and by that he'd be inspired knowing that mommy did everything she could because of me.  

  

Makhtar: Shelly-Ann that's so beautiful. Let me ask you now, now that your foundation is in place, now you are looking also at another side of you: entrepreneurship. You have a line which is looking at hair. And I'm not surprised because I have been following all your hair, every, race we were saying is it yellow, is it green, is it the colors of Jamaica, or another? So tell us about your haircare brand. Tell me more about it. 

 

Shelly-Ann: So AFIMI is patois for “its mine”. AFIMI is rooted in who I am as a person, as a Jamaican, as a woman, as an entrepreneur, as an athlete. It's years of going to different track meets and knowing what my hair needs are, celebrating my hair in different styles, wearing my bold color. It's really stepping into what my grandmother taught me, how she celebrated me as a woman, her ingredients that she would blend up at home and say, Okay, you have to put this in your hair to grow your hair. Because I've always been fascinated with hair.  

 

I’ll probably get a lot of flack for this, but I remember going to school with one hairstyle and then going in the bathroom and coming out with different hair. I would finish class early to get in the bathroom because my friends would be, you know, changing my hairstyle, and I'll be going home with a different hairstyle. So from the get go, I was always changing my hair. I was always in love with hair. 

 

But, you know, AFIMI is proudly Jamaican. It's about the herbs and the plants and the botanicals that we have here in Jamaica really coming together, and putting that and bottling it and showing the world that Jamaica, we can do it at home. We can invest in home. We can use what we have at home, and we can make it ours, and it can be yours. So really and truly it's years of just testing and knowing what my hair needs are, knowing what a woman would decide, okay, I want this to help, you know, grow my hair and bottling it and taking it and showing people that the essence of Jamaica is rooted right here in Jamaica. But it's more than just hair care. It's self love. It's loving who you are, loving the different ways you celebrate wearing your hair. It's about stepping into a new lane and showing women that you can become athletes, but you can also be entrepreneurs.  

 

And my mom was the first entrepreneur that I know, because my mom was - actually in Jamaica, you'd call it a higgler - but she was my first entrepreneur. She was selling sweets, she was selling firecrackers at Christmas time. She was selling roses at Valentine's Day. So she was the first person that I saw, really just tapping into that skill that she had to [do something with] whatever it is that her hands found. My grandmother would use this or Jamaicans would use this term: I'll say it in patois, and then I'll translate it in English. My grandmother would say, “You tek pon han’ an’ fashion.” So it's “whatever your hands found, you made it yours, you make it your own”. And that's really what AFIMI is.  

 

My hair is a big part of who I am. It's how I celebrate, you know, who I am as a Jamaican, its how I celebrate who I am as an athlete. I enjoy changing my hair color. I enjoy persons commenting and say, hey, what color hair are you wearing? 

 

I want to wear different hair, because I think as especially as black women, a lot of persons like to just put us in a box and say this style is not for you, or this style is for you. But I grew up seeing women in my community wearing different hair styles and wearing that proudly and boldly, because the reality is as humans by nature we have personality, we have vibe, we have style, and we want to show that style and AFIMI is really what that is. It's self love. It's bottling my grandmother's ingredients, its bottling the ways we grow our hair by going to the back of our homes and picking aloe vera or picking rosemary and blending it and making stuff that are unique to us, and bottling it and showing that it doesn't matter how you wear your hair. Doesn't matter what texture your hair is, AFIMI is for you. 

 

Makhtar: So for your business I'm very interested in that. You know we are lending $72 billion a year. Its a lot of infrastructure for larger countries, PPPs for highways, we help building factories. But part of our strategy, an important part of it, is also to support MSMEs - small and medium enterprises. And I'm very interested in seeing people with your profile, because you have already a lot of ingredients which are needed to be a successful business person: resilience, commitment, setting goals, knowing what adversity is, looking at things in the long run. So all these are, for me, something which are important to become a successful businesswoman...  

 

Shelly-Ann: I love that Makhtar. I think that's what it means to be a leader. You know what I mean? It's understanding that when it comes to sports, sports is a infrastructure, right? And not just entertainment. And we want persons to invest in our athletes. We want to invest because outside of sports, there are a lot of athletes that are, you know, investing in entrepreneurship. They're investing in, you know, tourism, or they're investing in their education. So we want to find a way to tap into that. How do we best support these athletes? How do we help them to transition?  

 

Because I can tell you this, the transition sometimes is hard because I think what a lot of athletes don't understand when they're in the sport - and if I wasn't careful, maybe that would have happened to me - we are so focused on the sport that we don't think about anything else. Track and field is for a time, it's a period, and you still have to live after that, and you have to really use resources that you have within the sport and really align or collaborate with leaders and, you know, companies that will help you to get to that next level, because the transition can be difficult, especially if we are not educated on that next step. Because for a lot of us, when we make decisions, we don't want to make decisions from emotions, or we don't want to make decisions from stress, especially financial decisions. We want to make decisions comfortably knowing that, okay, I have the right tools, I have the right knowledge, I have the right information, and this is why I'm making this decision. I'm making this decision because I know. I'm not making this decision because I'm stressed or I'm worried or my emotions are high or because I don't know what I'm doing next. So it's important to really collaborate with  athletes who already have the platform. And it is, you know, companies like yours, and you as a leader who will have the right tools to actually mentor some of these athletes. So I think for me, how do we help the athlete to transition.  

 

Makhtar:  I'm a big fan of Shelly-Ann the athlete. I love the person. You have been really fantastic today in this conversation. You have been showing all of us what is it to be a leader. Shelly-Ann you have been an example to a lot of young people. Continue inspiring them, continue supporting Jamaica in all the dimensions that you're doing, from the hurricane, to the foundation, to the business. And I think that you are a beautiful ambassador.  

 

Shelly-Ann: I appreciate that very much. I appreciate that. 

 

Makhtar: Thanks for listening, Creative Development is produced by Lindy Mtongana, Maeve Frances and Aida Holly-Nambi for IFC. Thanks for listening and tell a friend.