STEPHANIE SCOTT WAS AN UNSTOPPABLE FORCE

Published February 25, 2021

A CELEBRATED entrepreneur, Stephanie Scott’s life had many acts. Her energy, passion and innovation made her an “unstoppable force” in the culinary and event management world.

The founder and managing director of SSCO Event Management taught at Montessori Academy for 29 years before starting her event management firm and bringing Restaurant Week (RW), one of Jamaica’s largest culinary celebrations, to Jamaica.

“It’s true that earlier in her life, she was a teacher. But even then, she was creative, dynamic and bold,” Nicholas Scott, the renowned businesswoman’s son, told The Gleaner.

The managing director of Eppley Limited said his mother died following a car accident on Ash Wednesday near Duncans in Trelawny. She was the only passenger in the vehicle and was preparing to spend the long weekend with friends. She was 65.

Stephanie Scott graduated from the University of Toronto in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts in child psychology. Her journey in early childhood education began at Florida’s Montessori Academy. She started SSCO Event Management in 2001. Still, no matter the roles she held throughout her life, she continued to teach, whether it was life lessons or private tutoring.

“Like her father before her, she had a voracious curiosity about the world and deep belief in the power of education to transform lives,” Nicholas Scott said. He described his mother as an “edgy intellectual”, who was less a rigid disciplinarian. She promoted the Montessori method of selfdirected activity, hands-on learning and collaborative play, and advocated for “freedom of thought and expression in children, decades before it would become trendy”.

Through her SSCO Event Management firm, Stephanie Scott created Restaurant Week in 2005 and reinvented herself,

said her son. Initially called Kingston Restaurant Week (KRW), the culinary event started small and grew to feature a number of restaurants, patrons and sponsors. So significant was its growth that the KRW moniker no longer encapsulated what it had become. The event had expanded beyond Kingston to all across Jamaica and over the years had hit the shores of New York in the United States, and Birmingham in England.

“It is truly unimaginable that 10 years have passed since the idea of RW was born. Tentative, but optimistic and energetic, I set out in 2005 to encourage in Jamaicans an appreciation of fine food and dining out. Along the way, I have joyously watched as thousands of diners have feasted, toasted and celebrated the best of Jamaican cuisine,” said Stephanie Scott in 2014 as the event celebrated its 10th anniversary.

“She was passionate about making dining accessible, supporting the restaurant industry and promoting Jamaican cuisine. She was also a bona fide female entrepreneur and businesswoman. She single-handedly built a brand and a business and executed Restaurant Week with her legendary high standards and attention to detail for over a decade. In the process, she brought joy to tens of thousands of people,” Nicholas Scott said.

The Gleaner became a partner at the event’s inception. “Stephanie first had the discussion regarding Kingston Restaurant Week, early one morning with me as editor. I embraced the concept and took it to the product development team. It started a relationship that produced an eagerly anticipated event on the Jamaican social calendar each year,” said Garfield Grandison, general manager of The Gleaner Company (Media) Limited.

Grandison described Scott as “strong and decisive, yet caring”. “She was also creative and demanded excellence for everything she touched,” he said.