An ex­pe­ri­enced and high­ly qual­i­fied banker, Karen Dar­basie, takes up the po­si­tion as Group Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of First Cit­i­zens to­day. The new CEO brings to First Cit­i­zens 21 years of bank­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.Her most re­cent ap­point­ment was man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Mer­chant Bank, coun­try trea­sur­er and mMar­kets head at the lo­cal sub­sidiary of a multi­na­tion­al bank.

"I am par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with the ap­point­ment of Ms Dar­basie as Group CEO of the on­ly tru­ly in­dige­nous fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion in the coun­try and one of the lead­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions of its kind in the Caribbean" said chair­man An­tho­ny Smart."The board has recog­nised that Ms Dar­basie can add val­ue to First Cit­i­zens as a high­ly di­ver­si­fied fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion that of­fers the full range of ser­vices to cus­tomers, both in­di­vid­ual and cor­po­rate as well as gov­ern­ments; and we are al­so de­light­ed that she brings ex­pe­ri­ence from an in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion to First Cit­i­zens.

"We are con­fi­dent that un­der her lead­er­ship and to­geth­er with our strong and ca­pa­ble ex­ec­u­tive and se­nior man­age­ment teams, First Cit­i­zens will con­tin­ue grow­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly."Dar­basie's aca­d­e­m­ic ca­reer is as var­ied as her bank­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. She holds a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence (BSc) ho­n­ours de­gree in Elec­tri­cal En­gi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies; a Mas­ters of Sci­ence, with dis­tinc­tion in Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems (Uni­ver­si­ty of Es­sex, Eng­land); and a Mas­ter of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion (Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick, Eng­land) al­so with dis­tinc­tion.

"What is par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ing about the job of Group CEO of First Cit­i­zens is the op­por­tu­ni­ty it presents to make a con­tri­bu­tion to the growth of the na­tion­al economies in Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, Trinidad and To­ba­go and Cos­ta Ri­ca" said Dar­basie.

Dar­basie comes from a fam­i­ly of na­tion­al con­trib­u­tors. Her fa­ther, Reynold Ram­per­sad, rose to the po­si­tion of Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and eco­nom­ic ad­vi­sor to the Prime Min­is­ter. He served on sev­er­al boards and was award­ed the Cha­co­nia Medal (Sil­ver). Her moth­er, Mar­garet, re­tired as di­rec­tor of the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, her un­cle Frank Ram­per­sad, es­tab­lished the struc­ture for cre­ation of the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, was the first pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of High­er Ed­u­ca­tion Re­search Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (Ni­herst) and served on sev­er­al state boards as well as eco­nom­ic ad­vi­sor to Sir Shri­dath Ram­phal Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Com­mon­wealth.Dar­basie is the first fe­male Group CEO of First Cit­i­zens. She suc­ceeds ex­ec­u­tive chair­man An­tho­ny Smart who had filled the po­si­tion for the past four months.