How Trisha Bailey transformed sexual abuse, poverty and betrayal into a $700 million medical empire
Trisha Bailey, Jamaican billionaire business mogul.
What you need to know:
- Trisha Bailey's memoir chronicles her extraordinary journey from poverty in rural Jamaica to becoming a $700 million medical equipment mogul in America.
- Overcoming childhood hardship and sexual abuse, she found early success as an athlete before building her wealth through strategic career moves.
- Her greatest financial breakthrough came when she recognised the profit potential in medical equipment, particularly oxygen supply.
Trisha Bailey was born in St Elizabeth, Jamaica, one of the oldest parishes on the famous island. Her mother, Gloria Tomlinson, later moved to Kingston, the capital, where Trisha spent her early childhood. After a lack of financial support from Trisha's biological father, Gloria left her in the care of her grandmother, Rose Jones, and aunt, Verona, in Woodland, southwestern Jamaica.
Trisha's bed was a worn-out foam mattress on a weathered plywood platform in her grandmother’s dilapidated mud house, which was perched at the highest peak of Woodland. It was built with shaky boards, weakened concrete and uneven dirt walls. On the fall of September 30, 1990, Trisha, 13, and her sister, Yolande, flew to JFK Airport in New York City to connect to Hartford, Connecticut, where her mother had earlier moved. She was working as a bank teller after her ascension from her earlier Connecticut occupation of a housekeeper.
Their mother's 352 Laurel Street Willoughby apartment was a rundown rat-infested house in the west side of Hartford. Gunshots frequented the streets during residential arguments. Trisha could overhear sounds of couples having sex through the building's thin walls. While her mother was at work, Trisha's stepfather, who worked at night, started violating her and subjecting her to perform lewd sexual acts on him whenever she returned from schooling at Weaver High.
She escaped from the nightmare of sexual abuse and dwelt in the euphoric emotions of athletics. Middle-distance races allowed her to duck from her stepfather and live in an uplifted realm of sports. Instead of returning home immediately after school, she trained with her school athletics coach Butterfield and earned an after-school employment at Lee’s Famous Recipe outlet.
Coach Butterfield placed her in the junior Olympic team and she broke all high school records during her 400 and 800-metre stellar performances. Trisha became the most popular face in the local Connecticut newspapers and was quickly known as the fastest girl in New England. The feeling of a reinforced self-worth was exhilarating and she was overwhelmed by the pride of national attention.
The University of Georgia, Stanford, Louisiana State University, Morgan State University, Yale and the University of Connecticut (Uconn), phoned Weaver High and inundated Trisha with Athletic scholarship offers to study and compete at their academic institutions. Trisha settled for Uconn.
In her memoir, Unbroken: The Triumphant Story of a Woman’s Journey, she expresses her tumultuous intimacy experiences and how narcissistic, manipulative and deceitful the men she dated at Uconn were. The most egregious of them all was a petulant Uconn football wide-receiver named Marcel Robinson, who pressed false assault charges against her to induce the revocation of her scholarship.
The cover of Trisha Bailey's memoir, Unbroken: The Triumphant Story of a Woman’s Journey.
After graduation, Trisha was invited to work at Salomon Smith & Barney, one of the most prestigious stock brokerage firms in New York. The colleagues who surrounded her at the firm had an unprecedented focus to succeed and their enthusiasm enriched her mind with tenacity to create wealth.
As a stockbroker, she was introduced to rigorous six-month training that culminated in earning her brokerage licence. Her aggressiveness for success led to her interactions with athletes, celebrities, millionaires and billionaires. Despite earning an annual base salary of only $30,000, Trisha accumulated over $500,000 that brought forth a promotion every year. One particular progression led her to work with doctors in the pre-eminent field of cardiopulmonary medicine.
Her fortunes advanced further when Takeda recognised her exceptional sales aptitude and invested in her advancement by sending her to the University of Kentucky for specialised training in pulmonary diseases. She subsequently attended New York University to cultivate her certification in cardiovascular medicine and complete her MBA.
Trisha's outstanding financial muscle began levitating when she inaugurated the Association of Medical Recruiters, a company that supplied medical professionals to hospices. She generated $800,000 in her first year and made a vital discovery that the supply of oxygen fell under the umbrella of medical equipment.
She realised she could easily trade oxygen equipment with medical facilities and make a handsome profit margin. All the resources she accumulated for years of working in the medical industry paved the way for the inception of her new company, Bailey’s Medical Equipment, on April 11, 2011. After incorporating the company, she opened her first operational offices on Vero Beach in Florida.
She amplified her portfolio by obtaining accreditation and received a Medicare number that authorised her to work with private insurance companies and after a year, she began marketing and recruiting for the business. Trisha then opened Bailey’s Medical branches in St Petersburg, Florida; Fort Worth, Texas; Hartford, Connecticut; and eight other locations. Her impressive medical inventory generated a collective turnover of over $700 million, propelling her ascension to Jamaica's wealthiest woman.
The writer is a novelist, Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre (@jeffbigbrother).