Joe Issa’s Uncanny Ability Sought After For Leadership

The year was 1994, and Joe Issa was riding high in Jamaica’s significant earning tourism sector. He was turning around previously loss-making plants by just raising his magic wand, a unique gift he seemed to have been born with, a sort of DNA which would later take him to the very pinnacle of civic leadership.

Believing that Issa could solve any and everything, the unsuspecting young 29-year-old was being sought after by industry practitioners for all sorts of ideas, including areas in which he has had no involvement, relying as they do, on his uncanny ability to think things through and come up with solutions which no one could have imagined.

“I do not believe in superstition or the supernatural, and I am certainly not a weirdo, and I do not like creepy situations,” says Issa, when asked to explain that uncanny ability which his peers seem to think he possesses. “I simply apply logic to the situation and redefine what is thought to be the problem.”

However he does what makes him seem mysterious is working for him as, with all the professionals there are around the world it is Issa who would be picked by the global body for the top award of Young Hotelier of the World, and it would not end there.

Unknown to him, Issa was already being targeted for his first primary civic duty three years ahead of the event. So when the time came, a newspaper report announced that “the St. Ann Chamber of Commerce is to hold its annual general meeting at the Jamaica Grande in Ocho Rios this Saturday, and for the first time in three years it will be electing a new president.”

It was 1977, and several newspaper headlines were coming out naming Joe Issa to take over the leadership of the mighty St. Ann Chamber, including this one: Issa tipped to head St. Ann Chamber. It said, “1994 Young Hotelier of the World awardee, 31-year-old Joseph J. Issa, is the man set to replace outgoing president, St. Ann businesswoman Jeanne Dixon.”

Another report said: “A past student of Campion and the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, USA where he graduated cum laude in Accounting and Economics, Mr. Issa is said to have the backing of most Chamber members, and is, according to one member, ‘a virtual lock’ to secure the St. Ann Chamber’s top post.”

Moreover, when he did, the peace among St. Ann’s business community which had eluded them for so long, and which Issa had promised to address as a priority, was finally restored.