Gar­biel Faria, whose var­ied and ex­ten­sive ca­reer has cov­ered a wide range of in­dus­tries from man­u­fac­tur­ing to me­dia, will take charge at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce from the end of this month.

He has been ap­point­ed CEO of the coun­try's biggest busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tion, tak­ing over from Cather­ine Ku­mar who will re­tire on Sep­tem­ber 30. Faria took up du­ties at the Cham­ber's West­moor­ings head­quar­ters yes­ter­day and is work­ing along­side Ku­mar as they tran­si­tion to the new lead­er­ship.

With over 35 years' lead­er­ship and man­age­ment ex­pe­ri­ence gained both lo­cal­ly and abroad, Faria brings brand-build­ing, mul­ti-in­dus­try knowl­edge and ex­per­tise to the T&T Cham­ber. He has taught at the sec­ondary school lev­el and has worked in the ser­vices, durables, FM­CG (fast mov­ing con­sumer goods), spir­its and me­dia in­dus­tries in the Caribbean, Cen­tral and North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope.

A for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Guardian Me­dia Ltd, from Oc­to­ber 2009 to April 2014, he over­saw the trans­for­ma­tion of the for­mer Trinidad Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny in­to a mul­ti-faceted me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tion. Un­der his watch, in­vest­ments were made in the com­pa­ny's hu­man and tech­no­log­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture to en­sure sus­tain­able long term growth and to re­in­force its po­si­tion as a role mak­er in the in­dus­try.

Faria was in­stru­men­tal in the launch of Dig­i­tal Guardian, the dig­i­tal repli­ca of the Trinidad Guardian News­pa­per fea­tur­ing in­ter­ac­tive ad­ver­tis­ing and con­tent, pro­vi­sioned as a web­site and an IOS and An­droid App.

He al­so held key po­si­tions at Carib Brew­ery Ltd, An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd, SM Jaleel & Co Ltd, Neal and Massy Trinidad Ltd, T Ged­des Grant Ltd and Mecal­fab Ltd.

A se­nior ex­ec­u­tive, he holds a Mas­ter's in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion in In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness from Bar­ry Uni­ver­si­ty, and is a mem­ber of Delta Mu Delta In­ter­na­tion­al Ho­n­our So­ci­ety for Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Com­ment­ing on his new as­sign­ment, he said: "My pas­sion is build­ing co­he­sive teams with a sin­gle-mind­ed fo­cus; to take our com­pa­nies to high­er lev­els of per­for­mance through su­pe­ri­or brand eq­ui­ty man­age­ment, im­prov­ing our busi­ness process­es, dri­ving op­er­a­tional ex­cel­lence, un­der­stand­ing the fu­ture of the in­dus­try and cre­at­ing new trails rather than fol­low­ing old ones."

Not­ing that he has "built new brands and rein­vig­o­rat­ed old ones", the new T&T Cham­ber CEO, in com­ments post­ed on his LinkedIn page, said he is guid­ed by two main philoso­phies: "Work does not start or end once you en­joy what you do. My goal is to make a pos­i­tive im­pact on the gen­uine peo­ple I meet and leave the world a bet­ter place through my con­tri­bu­tions."