Founder and Chairman
Sylester Flowers lives by the belief that if you treat people fairly and with respect, they will reciprocate. For the past 41 years, Flowers has run his business in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and helped people thrive. He has made a career of serving the underserved.
A 1958 Howard University graduate, Flowers moved to California after serving in the military. Working as a pharmacist at St. Luke’s Hospital in San Francisco from 1961-1963, Flowers spent months planning, securing licenses and establishing credit to make his dream of starting his own business a reality.
In 1964, he opened the first of what became a chain of pharmacies in working-class neighborhoods. Within a few years, Flowers’ endeavor was profitable. On the advice of an accountant friend, he founded Ramsell Corporation as a holding company for his successful pharmacies in 1967.
In the early 1970’s, Flowers began working on an independent contract with the Department of Mental Health to provide methadone treatment services with the Westside Community Health Center, based in San Francisco’s impoverished Western Addition neighborhood.
For the next 14 years, he and his company provided pharmaceutical services and managed the program’s paperwork requirements for the county, state and federal government. During this time, Flowers also taught courses at the School of Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1982, Flowers secured an additional contract to manage outpatient prescription services for the City of San Francisco.
With his reputation as a leader in the field already established, San Francisco County turned to Flowers and Ramsell to manage its AIDS Drugs Assistance Program (ADAP) in 1992. Flowers built on this success to secure a contract with the State of California to consolidate all county programs throughout the state. In 2001, Ramsell took on similar responsibilities for the state of Washington.
SYLESTER FLOWERS
