Award-winning business executive Wayne Isaacs on tunnelling his way to the top

BY: Austin Maxwell

Wayne Isaacs has come a long way from his birthplace, the small town of Savanna-la-Mar, deep in rural Jamaica. Raised there until the age of 11 by members of an extensive family, he finds himself now, as a husband and parent in Canada, placing considerable emphasis on the value of a close and loving family.

So it’s no surprise that, professionally, he places equal emphasis on “building good people,” because by doing so, “you build good companies.” According to Isaacs, too many employers try and build companies at the expense of their people — and then wonder why true success eludes them.

And Isaacs has built an impressive career in a relatively short time. A University of Western Ontario graduate, Isaacs began his career in corporate finance with a US bank, quickly becoming its youngest vice-president. Fast-forward to the year 2007 and he’s co-founder, chairman and CEO of Delta Uranium Inc., a prospering, Toronto Stock Exchange-listed firm that now owns more than 1,000 square kilometres of uranium exploration land in northern Ontario. In between, he has been a senior executive and director of more than 30 publicly listed companies, the majority of which have been in the resource industry.

In recognition of such great accomplishments, Isaacs won the 2009 Harry Jerome Business Award handed out by the Black Business and Professional Association.

His journey to success in Canada has not been without incident, however. He faced the shock of racism within the first week at a Toronto public school. “I realized, from that moment, many of my relationships here would now be based on my colour and ethnicity — something completely foreign to me, until that point,” he says.

His adult life has seen its fair share of more of the same — one insurance salesperson, on hearing that Isaacs worked with a uranium mining company, asked, “Oh, what’s it like, working in the mines?” Isaacs was then president and director of the company in question. “People just don’t expect folks like me to be doing what I do. But I guess I’m either too dumb or too stubborn because I don’t let it even slow me down,” he says in retrospect. “I just ignore it and carry on being… myself.”

Asked what advice he’d give immigrants today, especially those considering the entrepreneurial path, Isaacs says: “The principal roadblock to anyone’s future is a lack of ambition — unwillingness to take a risk. If you have ambition and love what you do — even if you don’t have all the skills — I’ll take you on, because… you can learn skills! Without passion, you’ll never do a good job, never fully succeed.

“And, don’t let others define you — a ‘foreign’ accent should never be the reason for being denied any opportunity in life.”