Ryan Ba­choo

At­lantic LNG in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the pro­duc­ers of the Com­mu­ni­cat­ing for In­flu­ence - Lead­er­ship Se­ries, Vir­tu­al Busi­ness Ser­vices and SXD Lead­er­ship Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, host­ed the first Women in En­er­gy Break­fast event on Thurs­day.

The event, fea­tur­ing guest speak­er and ESG ex­pert, Ros­alind Kainyah MBE was de­signed to bring to­geth­er fe­male lead­ers of the in­dus­try to net­work while shar­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al per­spec­tive and en­gag­ing in ro­bust dis­cus­sions on crit­i­cal is­sues af­fect­ing the sec­tor lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly. It al­so served to ho­n­our the ser­vice of Ar­lene Chow, who re­cent­ly re­tired, af­ter serv­ing as the first woman in Trinidad and To­ba­go to lead a state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny.

Kainyah MBE has a back­ground in en­vi­ron­men­tal law and over thir­ty years of in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence across not on­ly the en­er­gy sec­tor but al­so pri­vate eq­ui­ty, fi­nan­cial ser­vices, and man­u­fac­tur­ing. Speak­ing at the event, she de­scribed her mis­sion as “sim­pli­fy­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty for busi­ness­es.” While shar­ing anec­dotes from her ca­reer, Kainyah stressed that “sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives must be tied to an or­ga­ni­za­tion’s core busi­ness to en­sure longevi­ty and im­pact”. She al­so en­cour­aged the fe­male lead­ers in at­ten­dance to think glob­al­ly, while ask­ing them­selves how they too can make a dif­fer­ence and in so do­ing pave the way for oth­er women.

At­lantic’s VP of Cor­po­rate Op­er­a­tions and Trans­for­ma­tion, Toni Sir­ju-Ram­nar­ine in her open­ing re­marks high­light­ed the progress that con­tin­ues to be made with­in the sec­tor, while un­der­scor­ing the need for women to cel­e­brate each oth­er say­ing, “This is ul­ti­mate­ly why we cre­at­ed this event; be­cause we saw the need for a space, a fo­rum if you will, where women with­in the sec­tor have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to get to know each oth­er a bit bet­ter and share their per­spec­tives on the work they do every day to dri­ve both this sec­tor and Trinidad and To­ba­go for­ward.”

Ho­n­ouree, Chow, end­ed the event by speak­ing can­did­ly of her own ca­reer and em­pha­sised the need for the lead­ers present to “Re­spect every­one, work hard, have in­tegri­ty and dis­ci­pline and nev­er feel sor­ry for them­selves.” In recit­ing from mem­o­ry, the Langston Hugh­es po­em ‘Dreams’, she re­mind­ed those in at­ten­dance to nev­er give up on their dreams, “For when dreams go, Life is a bar­ren field, Frozen with snow.”