Al­va Viar­ru­el

For­mer US am­bas­sador Beat­rice Wilkin­son Wel­ters was busy mak­ing fi­nal prepa­ra­tions to leave her Flagstaff Hill, St James, res­i­dence when she ac­cept­ed a re­quest for an in­ter­view by the Sun­day Guardian on Oc­to­ber 30. Dressed in a dark blue pin-striped busi­ness suit, she was still work­ing at 6.35 that evening as she came to the door apol­o­gis­ing-with­out the air of an am­bas­sador.

"Hi how are you? Give me a few min­utes I need to send off an e-mail, ok? Oh, and sor­ry for the mess, but as you know I'm pack­ing." The "mess" she re­ferred to were neat­ly packed box­es that had been stacked around the ground floor of the res­i­dence, ev­i­dence of the end of her 30-month as­sign­ment in T&T.

She had ear­li­er re­turned from To­ba­go, where she went to say farewell to House of As­sem­bly chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don and mi­nor­i­ty leader Ash­worth Jack, and was no doubt mak­ing fi­nal arrange­ments for the port and bor­der se­cu­ri­ty con­fer­ence she opened at the Hy­att two days lat­er.

Wel­ters' term in of­fice in Port-of-Spain was not one filled with con­tro­ver­sy and she rarely spoke to the me­dia. But when she did make pub­lic pro­nounce­ments, they were based on a firm de­ci­sion, to the point and un­apolo­getic. It was a char­ac­ter­is­tic of the am­bas­sador, whose up­bring­ing was re­flect­ed in how she has done her job.

Wel­ters was 12 when her fa­ther died. Five years ear­li­er, her moth­er had al­so passed on. So she grew up in fos­ter care with her adop­tive fam­i­ly in Brook­lyn, New York, a fate that she em­braced to spur her on as she suc­cess­ful­ly climbed the cor­po­rate lad­der. It would lat­er al­low her to make ex­cep­tion­al pro­vi­sion for oth­ers who would be raised in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances.

To­geth­er with her hus­band An­tho­ny Wel­ters, an at­tor­ney, she found­ed the An­Bryce Foun­da­tion in 1995 to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties to un­der­priv­i­leged chil­dren to achieve their dreams and as­pi­ra­tions. The foun­da­tion ac­quired land in Vir­ginia, where they hold an an­nu­al sum­mer acad­e­my known as Camp Dog­wood, teach­ing life skills to youths who would not oth­er­wise have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty, and some who were or­phans like her.

Wel­ters cred­its a friend of her fos­ter par­ents with shap­ing her in­to the in­di­vid­ual she is to­day. "Look­ing back, I be­lieve some­thing was pos­i­tive about it-look where I am now," she said. "You know, there is al­ways some­one that chil­dren grav­i­tate to for some emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

The friend of my fos­ter fam­i­ly whom I af­fec­tion­ate­ly called Aunt Regi­na, she be­lieved in me from the very start. Some­thing she saw in me said, 'This girl has some­thing, she'll make it no mat­ter what,' and I be­lieve that gave me the en­cour­age­ment to move on.

"I was al­ways a very fo­cused per­son, al­ways did well in school. I don't con­sid­er my­self a brain, but I was al­ways or­gan­ised. I be­lieve that is my strength. I be­lieve any­one who is or­gan­ised can do any­thing. "I can mul­ti-task. I can do a lot of things, be in­volved in a lot of things and be on tar­get each and every time. I'm an ex­ecu­tor. I mean, if some­one gives me a dead­line, I ex­e­cute. And I love when peo­ple say I can't do some­thing. I love it. Just love it."

Wel­ters em­braced phil­an­thropy around 1991, and she cred­its her Aunt Regi­na again for be­ing the in­spi­ra­tion to em­brace the prin­ci­ple of giv­ing back.

"I be­lieve that a smile, a nod, a hel­lo can go a long way with some­one. I've worked with a lot of kids, even here in Trinidad," she said, paus­ing with a heavy sigh. "I be­lieve they look up to us (adults), want­i­ng di­rec­tion. They don't come out and say they want di­rec­tion, but you can sense they want to know how you do it, how did you do it? And I've been say­ing to them, if I did, you can do it too."

It was a mes­sage Wel­ters car­ried with her on var­i­ous vis­its to homes and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions she sup­port­ed here. "A lot of peo­ple think be­ing phil­an­thropic is just what I call 'throw­ing mon­ey,' giv­ing mon­ey away. But to me phil­an­thropy is giv­ing mon­ey, yes, but al­so giv­ing qual­i­ty time. It is the qual­i­ty of time that you spend with in­di­vid­u­als that you men­tor.

So you in­vite them to your home, let them in­ter­act with your fam­i­ly and friends and be­come a part of your fam­i­ly, tru­ly a part of your fam­i­ly and that's how my hus­band and I have gone about...liv­ing."

Meet­ing Oba­ma

Wel­ters was en­gaged in the full-time func­tion she em­braced as a phil­an­thropist away from her cor­po­rate days at IBM-where she held sev­er­al po­si­tions in­clud­ing sys­tems en­gi­neer-when the call came to serve her coun­try. As chair­man and pres­i­dent of the An­Bryce Foun­da­tion she had met US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma in 2007, when the as­pir­ing sen­a­tor in­vit­ed she and her hus­band to have break­fast with him on Capi­tol Hill.

"We did not know at the time that he was plan­ning to run for Pres­i­dent, but we in­vit­ed him home for din­ner af­ter that with a group of busi­ness lead­ers and com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivists with whom we as­so­ci­at­ed, and then we did sev­er­al fundrais­ers for him; and that is how the re­la­tion­ship be­gan," Wel­ters re­called.

There was a gleam in her eyes as she de­scribed the cold Jan­u­ary day when Oba­ma was in­au­gu­rat­ed as Pres­i­dent. While the blan­kets pro­vid­ed for those in the VIP sec­tion warmed her body, the sight of hun­dreds of African-Amer­i­cans who braved the weath­er to wit­ness the his­toric event warmed her heart. But noth­ing pre­pared Wel­ters for what would come a cou­ple months lat­er.

"I got the call from the Pres­i­dent's staff say­ing that he had nom­i­nat­ed me to be an am­bas­sador. When I first heard it I was stunned! I couldn't re­act to it and then when I did, it was one of feel­ing ter­ri­bly ho­n­oured about it and very hum­bled, but at the same time hav­ing some reser­va­tions. At the time I was head­ing my foun­da­tion and sit­ting on six or sev­en non-prof­it boards and I had to con­tem­plate leav­ing my com­fort zone to do this."

It al­so meant leav­ing be­hind her hus­band and her two sons, who were at­tend­ing Notre Dame Uni­ver­si­ty, and there was al­so the con­cern about how she would be re­ceived by this coun­try. "Peo­ple re­act dif­fer­ent­ly to this type of thing, some would have jumped to it but it took me some time, al­most a month to de­cide whether or not I want­ed to take on this ex­pe­ri­ence. Yes, I knew I had a lot to of­fer but it would be to­tal­ly out of my com­fort zone," she re­flect­ed.

Go­ing back to the US...but still help­ing T&T

Now, hav­ing re­signed, as is the cus­tom of po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees when the in­cum­bent pres­i­dent runs for re-elec­tion, she is sat­is­fied with her stew­ard­ship. "I feel great. I think that I have fit in well. The Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian peo­ple have ac­cept­ed me with their hearts.

They have the gift of warmth and friend­ship, which they are not afraid to share with any­one. I think Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans are ex­treme­ly gen­uine, you know im­me­di­ate­ly if they have a prob­lem with you but that's fine with me, I pre­fer that than any­thing else. I re­al­ly en­joyed it."

De­scrib­ing her­self as an ex­treme­ly ac­tive per­son, Wel­ters said "the run­ning here and there to var­i­ous meet­ings with the lead­ers of this coun­try, try­ing to re­solve prob­lems, try­ing to work on and col­lab­o­rate on var­i­ous bi­lat­er­al mat­ters, and work­ing in com­mu­ni­ty out­reach pro­grammes-that is what I loved the best."

She was not kid­ding when she said ex­treme­ly ac­tive: she works out for at least two and a half hours a day and was known to have hiked through the Trinidad coun­try­side, in­clud­ing scal­ing Mt Holo­lo a few times, as well as La­dy Chan­cel­lor Hill and Ter­raci­ta Dri­ve.

"I hiked Mt Kil­i­man­jaro twice, but when I came here my se­cu­ri­ty de­tail had some is­sues. But they've got­ten in shape too and I think they're en­joy­ing it now," she said, laugh­ing. Wel­ters be­lieves a lot of pos­i­tive things have come out of her ex­pe­ri­ence as a diplo­mat, though she ad­mits she de­lib­er­ate­ly avoid­ed the lime­light nor­mal­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with a US am­bas­sador to this coun­try.

"I'm a per­son who is very com­fort­able work­ing be­hind the scenes. I do not need the cam­eras, the lights, the ac­tion. I don't need that. "The am­bas­sador­ship did not de­fine who I am. I was al­ready de­fined be­fore I took this and maybe that's the dif­fer­ence. It didn't de­fine me."

Now, she's look­ing for­ward to be­ing a pri­vate cit­i­zen again, and plans to re­turn to T&T for the com­mis­sion­ing of the new fa­cil­i­ty of one of the homes she sup­ports. She has set up Skype ses­sions with the homes and ex­pects of­fi­cials at the US Em­bassy here to keep tabs on them.

She al­so in­tends to have her foun­da­tion ex­tend out­reach pro­grammes to lo­cal NGOs to en­cour­age cul­tur­al and ed­u­ca­tion­al ex­changes-hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly run a pro­gramme, to­geth­er with New York Uni­ver­si­ty's Law School and NYU's un­der­grad­u­ate school, to pro­duce stel­lar stu­dents.

"It is not out of the ques­tion that some of the lo­cal chil­dren will one day at­tend Camp Dog­wood's life-trans­form­ing sum­mer ses­sions," she said. "I've had a won­der­ful time here. I'm lift­ed be­cause I know I will al­ways have some con­nec­tion with T&T and I am free to come back and work in the non-prof­it world in my pri­vate ca­pac­i­ty. That re­al­ly ex­cites me."