Dr. Glen Laman has been named as one of the Distance Education Accrediting Commission's (DEAC) famous alumni for 2015.
Dr. Laman’s recently published book, Jamaican Entrepreneurship, has put him on the interview and lecture circuit among the Caribbean communities in the USA and Caribbean. The well-received book, which emerged from the doctoral dissertation he wrote while studying at the University of Management and Technology (UMT), examines 15 outstanding Jamaicans and their divergent paths to success.
His educational journey began as a boy attending classes in an open-air classroom in rural Jamaica. He completed his high school education at Kingston College shortly after which he journeyed to the USA. He was able to complete his bachelor and master’s degrees through hard work and scholarships. Ultimately, he became an executive at Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta.
While in Atlanta, he was a founding board member of the Jamaican Chamber of Commerce of Atlanta, and now serves as its President.
As he approached retirement age, he thought about achieving the pinnacle of education attainment: a doctorate. He enrolled in UMT’s Doctor of Business Administration program and found himself immersed in learning how to carry out advanced research in the behavioral sciences.
In selecting a dissertation topic, Glen turned to a question that had long intrigued him: How is it that poverty-stricken Jamaica, a Small Island Developing State (SIDS), possessed so many independent small business owners who were able to survive and even thrive in a tough economic, political, and social environment?
Applying the research methods covered in his doctoral program, Glen addressed this question by interviewing 15 accomplished entrepreneurs to discover what made them tick and carrying out a content analysis of their comments.
The result is an original, engaging study of the human side of entrepreneurship in a poor country that identifies systematic factors contributing to entrepreneurial success. The dissertation was so well-written that the UMT faculty urged Glen to publish his findings as a book–which he did.
To learn more about Dr. Laman's work visit: www.glenlaman.com