When Carl Black walked through the gates of Red Stripe in 1987, fresh out of Calabar High School, he wasn’t thinking about spending nearly four decades there. He was thinking about his family.  Both his parents were struggling with serious health challenges, and Carl knew he needed to start working. “My mother had a damaged heart valve, and my father was sick with high blood pressure and diabetes,” he recalls. “I had to get to work right away. When I heard Red Stripe was hiring, I took the test, got through, and that was it.”

Thirty-nine years later, Carl is still there. He has worked through changes in ownership, watched generations of colleagues come and go and seen the brewery transformed by new technology and new ways of working. Through it all, Carl has done something that, in retrospect, seems to explain much of his longevity: he kept learning.

 He started on the production floor as a packaging operator, determined to make the most of the opportunity he had been given. “You had the opportunity to learn, to grow and to be part of something,” he says. “For me, Red Stripe was a place where I could build a future.”  And he did. Carl immersed himself in training, learned the machinery and remained curious about how things could be done better. In 2002, he became certified in industrial firefighting through the Maritime Institute and joined the brewery’s emergency response team, learning to operate the site’s fire truck and respond to emergencies.

Six years later, that training took on a significance he could never have anticipated. When a fire broke out in his Portmore community in 2008, Carl was able to draw on the emergency response skills he had acquired at work to help rescue a neighbour. “That meant a lot to me,” he says. “What I learned here actually made a difference when it counted.”

His willingness to learn also took him overseas. In 2005, Carl travelled with a Red Stripe team to Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Canada, where they observed brewery operations and explored practices that could be applied back home. “That was big for me,” he recalls. “We saw new ways of doing things and brought back ideas we could actually use. It made the job feel exciting, like you were part of a bigger world.”

Among the practices he helped introduce on the production line was the CILT routine: cleaning, inspection, lubrication and tightening, aimed at identifying potential equipment problems before they become bigger ones. But after nearly four decades, some of Carl’s most important lessons have little to do with machinery.

In 2021, he became a Team Leader and has since become a mentor to a number of operators. His approach to leadership rests on a belief he has developed over years of working with people: you cannot judge everyone by your own yardstick. “You have to meet people where they are,” he says.

For Carl, that means taking the time to understand people’s strengths and weaknesses, helping them build on what they already do well and supporting them in the areas where they need to develop.

One of the people he speaks about with particular pride is Calvin Smith. Calvin started as a packaging operator but wanted to progress. First came an interest in becoming a filler operator, and later an ambition to move into Utilities. Carl encouraged him, mentored him and facilitated conversations with people working in the areas Calvin wanted to explore. The doors opened, but Carl is clear that Calvin had to walk through them himself. Today, Calvin works in Utilities.

It is a story Carl uses to reinforce something he regularly tells the people he mentors: there are no barriers to entry except those created by your own mindset. He believes people have to take ownership of their own development and growth. His role as a mentor is not to map out someone else’s future for them, but to help them recognise what may be possible and encourage them to pursue it.

That philosophy has travelled home with him too. Carl has four children, and he credits his years of working with people with teaching him lessons about communication that have strengthened his relationships with his family. He recalls that his relationship with his daughter was not always as close as it is today. When she was younger, there were disagreements about her wanting to go out without always saying where she was going. Over time, Carl realised that simply telling her what he expected was not enough. He needed to explain why. He wanted to know where she was because he cared about her safety. That shift towards more open and honest communication made a difference, and today he treasures the closeness they share.

It comes back to the same principle he applies to the people he mentors: meet people where they are. Carl would need to draw deeply on that understanding of family in 2018, when his son was murdered. It was a devastating loss, but even in his own grief, Carl knew he still had to be present for his other children and his grandchildren. Today, he is grandfather to eight, and he finds particular comfort in knowing that his son’s legacy continues through the family he left behind. The experience reinforced a quality that has carried Carl through many seasons of his life: resilience.

Over 39 years, Red Stripe has also given him opportunities that the teenager who first entered the brewery could hardly have imagined. One of the most significant was becoming a homeowner. Through an employee housing initiative involving Red Stripe, the National Housing Trust and Life of Jamaica, Carl was able to acquire one of 40 homes made available to employees.

His career also allowed him to educate his children and provide opportunities for his family; achievements that carry particular meaning for someone who entered the workforce so young because his own family needed his support.

He has seen many people come and go during his years at Red Stripe. Carl, however, has remained a constant presence, adapting through changes in ownership and operations while continuing to learn and grow. Now, much of what he has accumulated over those years is being invested in the people coming behind him. “You pass on your experience,” he says. “People come to you because you’ve been here and you’ve seen different things.”

For Carl, however, experience is useful only if it helps someone else move forward. Thirty-nine years after taking a test for a job he urgently needed, he has built a career, a home and a future for his family. He has learned skills that once helped him save a neighbour’s life, weathered unimaginable personal loss and become an advocate and mentor for others finding their own way. And the lesson he continues to pass on is the one his own journey perhaps demonstrates best: growth begins when you believe there is somewhere further you can go.