About Us

Our Founders

Sylester Flowers lives by the belief that if you treat people fairly and with respect, they will reciprocate. For over 40 years, Flowers ran his businesses 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. He worked as a pharmacist at St. Luke's Hospital in San Francisco from 1961 to 1963. Flowers spent months planning, securing licenses and establishing credit to make his dream of starting his own business a reality.

In 1964, Syl 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.

During the early 1970s, Flowers worked as an independent contractor with the Department of Mental Health providing methadone treatment services with the Westside Community Health Center 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 document processing for the County, state and federal government. At the same time, Flowers 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 an established reputation as a leader in the field, San Francisco County invited Flowers and Ramsell to manage its AIDS Drugs Assistance Program (ADAP) in 1992. Flowers built on this success and secured 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. Recently, Ramsell has branched out into prescription benefits management and related businesses in Colorado and Texas.