By PAT BRODERICK

The late writer Ayn Rand was both vilified and canonized during her lifetime an advocate of either selfishness or self-fulfillment, depending on one’s point of view. For Sheryll Jackman, the self-made powerhouse of Coronado, Rand helped light the way.

“Ayn Rand changed my life, because of what she wrote about what people are capable of doing,” said Jackman, 61. “You have to go for it.”

A licensed general contractor, a real estate broker and certified interior designer, Jackman is president and designer of Jackman Industries Inc., the parent corporation that includes the Jackman Group, a purveyor of planning, design and construction services, and her retail operations — Seaside Home stores in Coronado and La Jolla, which carry high-end furnishings and accessories; and Coronado-based Seaside Paperie, specializing in stationery, invitations and gift items. She employs a staff of 30 for her diversified activities, including her own painters and finished carpenters.

In addition to launching the local businesses, Jackman is credited with helping to revitalize Coronado through her work with MainStreet Ltd., an independent agency that worked to improve the downtown business district along Orange Avenue and as a member of a City Council-appointed committee, which had been charged with developing a master plan for Coronado’s business districts.

Defining The Look

Kris Grant, publisher of Coronado Lifestyle magazine and a former executive director of the Coronado Visitors Bureau, has known Jackman for 20 years.

“Sheryll is brilliant,” said Grant. “She can guide clients, take their input on what they want, and be able to see what they need. Her interior design is some of the most functional I’ve ever seen. She helped define the look of Coronado. If you walked down Orange Avenue, you’d say, ‘That one’s a Jackman, that one’s a Jackman.’ In Coronado, you see the Jackman signs in all of these wonderful homes going up, and they all have this classic design.”

Jackman has received many awards by the American Society of Interior Designers, including an award for her work on the Duchess of Windsor Cottage on the grounds of the Hotel del Coronado and for the design of her La Jolla Seaside Home store, which, along with the Coronado outlet, also was voted “Best Furniture Store” in San Diego by the readers of Ranch & Coast Magazine last year.

The city of Coronado has awarded the Jackman Group several Hibiscus Awards for its historic renovation of the Spreckles Building in Coronado, as well as the La Avenida complex, which houses Seaside Home in Coronado.

“The thing that has worked well for Sheryll, on the commercial side, she looks at function,” said Grant. “She is sharp, a Renaissance woman. I have never seen her anything but calm.”

But back at El Capitan High School, when Jackman first started pondering a possible career in the building industry, she didn’t find many role models.

“I had always wanted to be an interior designer, but my counselor had no idea what I was talking about,” she recalled. “I had always been fascinated with the building environment.”

source : www.sdbj.com