Au­ro­ra Her­rera

"When you ar­rive we will have a love­ly fruit sal­ad wait­ing for you." These were the words that marked the end of my first con­ver­sa­tion with Nicole Joseph-Chin, so­cial en­tre­pre­neur and founder of Ms Brafit.

Joseph-Chin's word was as good as the pineap­ple, wa­ter­mel­on and can­taloupe fruit sal­ad that she greet­ed me with. More than that, this sim­ple ges­ture is a great ex­am­ple of the kind of woman and leader that is host­ing the Vi­tal Voic­es Glob­al Men­tor­ing Walk, tak­ing place to­mor­row, In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day.

"In Oc­to­ber 2014, I had an op­por­tu­ni­ty as a leader to be part of the Vi­tal Voic­es glob­al or­gan­i­sa­tion by way of be­ing grant­ed a fel­low­ship for one year," Joseph-Chin re­lat­ed. "Vi­tal Voic­es is a glob­al move­ment ini­ti­at­ed in 1997, by the for­mer US Sec­re­tary of State Made­line Al­bright and the then First La­dy, Hillary Clin­ton.

The pro­gramme be­gan in Jan­u­ary this year and one of the fo­cus­es is how to bring women to­geth­er on a glob­al scale. One of the ac­tiv­i­ties is be­ing able to have a glob­al walk that will see 53 coun­tries walk­ing to­geth­er on March 8.

"This walk takes place on In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day and we will all be shar­ing a mo­ment in time and that syn­er­gy is phe­nom­e­nal," she said. "If noth­ing else has hap­pened glob­al­ly of that mag­ni­tude where so many coun­ties do the same thing on the same day, this is in­cred­i­bly pow­er­ful."

This is the first year that T&T has been au­tho­rised to have the walk, based on Joseph-Chin be­ing one of the fel­lows and hav­ing been grant­ed the li­cense for the walk. Trinidad will be join­ing women from St Lu­cia, Guyana, the Amer­i­c­as, Asia, Africa and the Pa­cif­ic coun­ties.

The key mes­sage of this walk is to es­tab­lish the use of men­tor­ship as a tool to cre­ate out­comes that are pos­i­tive for the fu­ture gen­er­a­tions, where women and girls who are po­ten­tial lead­ers will be able to have a space as po­ten­tial lead­ers.

"It's an ho­n­our to be the flag bear­er for Vi­tal Voic­es," she said. "The im­por­tant thing is to look at how many women we can share with and reach out to so that we can all be bet­ter."

Joseph-Chin is warm, car­ing and nur­tur­ing. She gen­uine­ly cares about women and their de­vel­op­ment as in­di­vid­u­als as well as a com­mu­ni­ty. Her so­cial en­ter­prise Ms Brafit is a great ex­am­ple of this. The of­fice, the staff, the en­tire am­bi­ence cre­ates a safe, wel­com­ing space where a woman can feel com­fort­ably vul­ner­a­ble. Just as an ex­am­ple, I went to do an in­ter­view and end­ed up hav­ing a bra fit­ting and talk­ing about some of my own is­sues as a woman with bra com­fort.

"I worked in the bank­ing sec­tor for 15 years in var­i­ous de­part­ments and I en­joyed that as­pect of my growth and de­vel­op­ment but there has al­ways been the sense of be­ing a teacher in my DNA," she said. "So af­ter strug­gling with my own is­sues of bra com­fort, I start­ed Miss Brafit to em­pow­er women via their first lay­er of cloth­ing."

Joseph-Chin start­ed Miss Brafit in 2002 from her home. Her train­ing in­clud­ed med­ical train­ing and in­tern­ship and men­tor­ship. She en­gaged in post sur­gi­cal train­ing, or­tho­pe­dics, lym­phede­ma train­ing, as well as crit­i­cal train­ing in terms of un­der­stand­ing needs and is­sues that women have from the phys­i­o­log­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and clin­i­cal as­pects of their breasts. "When a woman comes for a bra fit­ting, you need to re­al­ly un­der­stand why she is there," she said.

"What a woman who is a sur­vivor and is in treat­ment needs as com­pared to a woman who is go­ing through menopause needs as com­pared to a young girl now de­vel­op­ing is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent."

In 2004 Joseph-Chin opened up Ms Brafit in terms of pub­lic vis­i­bil­i­ty and the first two or three news­pa­per ar­ti­cles were pub­lished.

"In 2006, I de­cid­ed to take the plunge and leave my se­cure cor­po­rate en­vi­ron­ment be­cause to me, this is my com­mu­ni­ty," she said. "To me, there is noth­ing more em­pow­er­ing than one woman be­ing en­cour­aged by an­oth­er."

In 2007, Joseph-Chin re­lo­cat­ed to her present of­fice space on the South West­ern cor­ner of the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. In 2010 af­ter a few years of build­ing her so­cial en­ter­prise she was recog­nised as a fe­male leader and so­cial en­tre­pre­neur in T&T and the Caribbean that was mak­ing a vast dif­fer­ence in terms of women's well­ness and health.

"I was se­lect­ed by the US State De­part­ment to spend a lit­tle un­der month in the US as part of an in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tor lead­er­ship pro­gramme," Joseph-Chin said. "I was the on­ly Caribbean woman se­lect­ed. I had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­der­stand en­tre­pre­neur­ship and un­der­stand how de­ci­sion mak­ing hap­pens at a top lev­el, as well as how ad­vo­ca­cy for en­tre­pre­neur­ial op­por­tu­ni­ties were cre­at­ed form a gov­ern­men­tal po­si­tion."

Joseph-Chin used this ex­pe­ri­ence to be­gin help­ing women even more. She be­gan invit­ing many fe­male en­tre­pre­neurs to share her space and col­lab­o­rate. Ms Brafit went on to host Valen­tine Day Events and sem­i­nars. From 2010 to 2012, Joseph-Chin ran an event called Cup­cakes and Cleav­age that em­pow­ered women by shar­ing a pos­i­tive mes­sage, al­lowed women to col­lab­o­rate and have a space and al­so al­lowed women to be able to see the po­ten­tial for growth in a com­mu­ni­ty.

In 2011 Joseph-Chin was al­so in­vit­ed to be part of Path­ways to Pros­per­i­ty, an­oth­er lead­er­ship event for fe­male en­tre­pre­neurs.

"Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter we got a call af­ter the from the US State De­part­ment in Wash­ing­ton that we now had to form a women's en­tre­pre­neur­ial net­work of the Caribbean that was go­ing to be the con­tin­u­a­tion of that meet­ing with Ho­n­our­bale Sec­re­tary Clin­ton. In 2013 at a women's fo­rum in Wash­ing­ton, I was elect­ed as the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Women's En­tre­pre­neur­ial Net­work Caribbean (WENC) and lead rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the T&T Chap­ter."

Joseph-Chin cred­its her par­ents for her up­bring­ing, with­out which, she would not be the leader she is to­day.

"I have had a beau­ti­ful stream of re­la­tion­ships with men­tors and lead­ers, peo­ple who have in­flu­enced my life in so many ways. My par­ents though have im­pact­ed me the most. My par­ents gave me an amaz­ing up­bring­ing," Joseph-Chin said. "They gave me a great ex­po­sure to glob­al cul­ture and they taught me how to love and em­brace peo­ple, no mat­ter who!"

She al­so cred­its her al­ma mater, St. George's where her coach­ing be­gan as she re­turned there to teach af­ter grad­u­at­ing.

Aside from these tan­gi­ble pro­fes­sion­al land­marks, Joseph-Chin em­pha­sis­es the gifts that she has re­ceived on a per­son­al lev­el.

"I teach be­cause I learn and learn every­day from my clients, from women," she said. " They trust me to take care of them, they em­pow­er me while I em­pow­er them, we are vul­ner­a­ble to­geth­er, so it's a love­ly ex­change. Peo­ple are not go­ing see us fall if we are vul­ner­a­ble in the right crowd; they are go­ing to make sure we are ok stand­ing to­geth­er."

Joseph-Chin con­tin­ues to ex­pand knowl­edge amongst her peers, pre­sent­ing sem­i­nars on breast health and breast ad­vo­ca­cy lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and al­so lec­tur­ing on so­cial en­tre­pre­neur­ship at ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

These ex­pe­ri­ences are what po­si­tion Joseph-Chin so per­fect­ly to lead the Vi­tal Voic­es walk this week­end.

"We want to in­vite the wider pub­lic to join us in the walk, we want to en­cour­age the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to have their lead­ers walk with us or be part of next year's event," she said. "We want all the lead­ers to un­der­stand this is not one leader ver­sus the oth­er, we are all vul­ner­a­ble and we are all shar­ing a space. We want the cor­po­rate bank­ing and en­er­gy sec­tors to be­come a part of our team and net­work that un­der­stands that women are not on­ly ad­min pro­fes­sion­als on ad­min pro­fes­sion­al day or a moth­er on moth­er's day, a woman is a leader every day. We are cast­ing the net out so we can de­vel­op men­tor­ship as a lifestyle. We look for­ward to the pow­er of col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er women's groups as well."

IN­FO

The Walk starts at 4 pm at South West­ern Cor­ner Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in the vicin­i­ty be­tween Ms Brafit's of­fice at Cipri­ani and the US em­bassy. Joseph-Chin can be con­tact­ed at in­fo@ms­brafit.com or 868-755-1496 for more in­for­ma­tion on this event.