Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

Her love af­fair with breast care and health all start­ed when she need­ed a bra at nine. Some decades lat­er, that love has dri­ven Nicole Joseph-Chin pas­sion­ate­ly to­ward her call­ing. And now this au­thor, blog­ger and fe­male em­pow­er­ment gu­ru is not just touch­ing lives, she is chang­ing them one bra at a time.

At Ms Brafit, breast health and well­ness is tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. Whether a client is full fig­ured, has sen­si­tive skin, spinal is­sues or a mas­tec­to­my, di­rec­tor/founder Joseph-Chin en­sures com­fort and op­ti­mum ser­vice. So ex­ten­sive is her re­search in the field of breast health that re­search ma­te­r­i­al and aca­d­e­m­ic pa­pers in her or­gan­i­sa­tion's stud­ies on breast care were de­liv­ered at Ok­la­homa Uni­ver­si­ty, where soon she will be a fea­ture speak­er at an in­ter­na­tion­al med­ical con­fer­ence.

Joseph-Chin is as busy-bod­ied as she is charm­ing. Through­out her in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, the Caribbean's ex­pert in bra and mas­tec­to­my fit­ting dart­ed back and forth to check up on her clients, who came for ei­ther a bra fit­ting or to pur­chase one.

Her es­tab­lish­ment at 10 Queen's Park West, Port-of-Spain, is fre­quent­ed by clients rang­ing from the woman in the board­room to the house­wife. The for­mer bank man­ag­er is US board-cer­ti­fied, with train­ing in post-mas­tec­to­my care and pros­thet­ic fit­tings from rep­utable post-sur­gi­cal care cor­po­ra­tions in the US and Eu­rope. Her prod­ucts are at­trac­tive as well as clin­i­cal­ly de­signed for breast health and well­ness.

These cus­tom-made bras have been a woman's best friend since Joseph-Chin start­ed the busi­ness out of her San­ta Cruz home 14 years ago. It is no won­der she has at­tained many ac­co­lades over the years from var­i­ous in­sti­tu­tions that sup­port women's health. She is al­most like fam­i­ly to the T&T, Amer­i­can and St Lu­cian can­cer so­ci­eties, and oth­er sup­port groups with whom she has vol­un­teered.

Among the many cer­tifi­cates that em­bell­ish the wall be­hind her desk is a lit­tle love note from for­mer CNN Ear­ly Start co-an­chor Zo­rai­da Sam­bolin, who was di­ag­nosed with breast can­cer in 2013 and had a dou­ble mas­tec­to­my. She thanked Joseph-Chin for cre­at­ing the Treat­ment Com­pan­ion Book which she be­lieves every woman should in­vest in to track her health and med­ical sta­tus.

Last year, Joseph-Chin was cho­sen by in­ter­na­tion­al women's ad­vo­ca­cy group Vi­tal Voic­es Glob­al to be its lead flag bear­er for T&T. The NGO–found­ed in 1997 by for­mer US Sec­re­tary of State Made­line Al­bright and then First La­dy Hi­lary Clin­ton–trains and em­pow­ers women lead­ers and so­cial en­tre­pre­neurs around the globe.

"I was one of 330 par­tic­i­pants of the Glob­al Fel­low­ship 2015. I was nom­i­nat­ed by Vi­tal Voic­es to par­tic­i­pate in the lead­er­ship fel­low­ship pro­gramme. I was the on­ly Trinida­di­an on that fel­low­ship," she said.

The fel­low­ship pro­gramme was fund­ed by the UK Gov­ern­ment in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Vi­tal Voic­es out of Wash­ing­ton DC. It was be­cause of her work in women's health and in bra fit­ting, breast and mas­tec­to­my care for women that Joseph-Chin was se­lect­ed.

Joseph-Chin, as the CEO of her com­pa­ny, was grant­ed a full one-year fel­low­ship which in­clud­ed stud­ies on de­vel­op­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming. While there, she pro­vid­ed ser­vices as well as shared best prac­tices, and en­joyed ac­tiv­i­ties which in­clud­ed a sem­i­nar in Ar­genti­na in­volv­ing a peer ex­change (sev­en out of 330 were cho­sen to go to that ex­change).

But above all this, she not­ed the sis­ter­hood that was formed among these women lead­ers at the fel­low­ship.

"You know how we al­ways talk about women bash­ing each oth­er? But meet­ing all those women–I can­not be­gin to tell you about the sis­ter­hood and the bonds that we have de­vel­oped. I can pick up the phone at any time and talk to one of my sis­ters," said Joseph-Chin in a cheer­ful tone.

She added: "I of­ten laugh about it be­cause I tell my­self while it's day­light in their coun­try, I have to switch on my light to talk to them, but the light is so prophet­ic and much big­ger than we are. It is a big some­thing. I can­not re­al­ly ex­plain it, but that light is more than just a phys­i­cal light or day­light. It is what we bring to each oth­er's lives. And what I have been re­al­ly ex­cit­ed about do­ing is shar­ing that same light with women in my own coun­try."

She said as so­cial en­tre­pre­neurs, these women in lead­er­ship roles run their en­ter­pris­es on the premise that they serve peo­ple–but they al­so give back, in mon­ey, time, and al­so as an ex­pres­sion of what they have de­vel­oped.

Joseph-Chin, as the lo­cal face of Vi­tal Voic­es Glob­al through her com­pa­ny Ms Brafit, col­lab­o­rat­ed with Vi­tal Voic­es Glob­al and the US Em­bassy T&T last year to stage the first Vi­tal Voic­es Glob­al Men­tor­ing Walk in T&T. The walk was al­so sup­port­ed by the Sorop­tomist Club of Port-of-Spain.

The an­nu­al event comes around just in time to com­mem­o­rate In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day, which is cel­e­brat­ed three days lat­er on March 8. Hap­pen­ing in 52 coun­tries, the con­cept for the Vi­tal Voic­es Glob­al Men­tor­ing Walk came from Amer­i­can me­dia icon, founder and for­mer CEO of Oxy­gen Me­dia, Geral­dine Lay­bourne, who want­ed to em­pow­er young women pro­fes­sion­als in New York City and across the US.

Since the walk be­gan in 2008, it has reached thou­sands of women in over a dozen coun­tries. Last year alone, it brought to­geth­er 7,200 women at 73 walks world­wide.

Joseph-Chin said the first walk here was a suc­cess.

"It was a love­ly ex­pe­ri­ence last year, (al­though) we planned the walk in lit­er­al­ly three weeks...We re­al­ly saw a love­ly out­pour­ing of women in­ter­est­ed in men­tor­ing...the walk is re­al­ly about men­tor­ship, shar­ing good ad­vice and good sto­ries." Joseph-Chin praised US Em­bassy head of cul­tur­al af­fairs Stephen Weekes for be­ing good mas­cu­line sup­port last year, as he came with his daugh­ter for the walk.

She said the aim is to al­ways have no more than 20 men­tors and mentees for the walk, and gen­er­al sup­port­ers and peo­ple who can share dis­cus­sions. The walk in 2015 at­tract­ed 60 to 70 peo­ple, she said, and be­gan with a mi­ni-sym­po­sium at her of­fice on lead­er­ship, men­tor­ship and women's is­sues.

This year it will be­gin the same. But new this year is in­ter­na­tion­al women's ad­vo­ca­cy en­ter­tain­ment group, Girl Be Heard.

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site www.girl­be­heard.org, Girl Be Heard cre­ates a world for young women to find strength, re­alise their po­ten­tial, and rise above their cir­cum­stances and so­ci­ety's ex­pec­ta­tions of them. It us­es the­atre as its ve­hi­cle to em­pow­er young women to be­come brave, con­fi­dent, so­cial­ly con­scious lead­ers and ex­plore their own chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances.

Girl Be Heard will be con­duct­ing a di­a­logue at Ms Brafit with stake­hold­ers on March 5, be­fore join­ing in the Vi­tal Voic­es Glob­al Men­tor­ing Walk around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, to be­gin at 4 pm.

�2 MORE IN­FO: For more in­for­ma­tion on the Vi­tal Voic­es Glob­al Men­tor­ing Walk, vis­it Face­book.com and search: Ms Brafit. Or call 689-3083. You can al­so send emails to in­fo@ms­brafit.com.