Roslyn Car­ring­ton

"Work is a day-to-day thing," says Dr. Car­la Noel-Mendez. "Life is a day-to-day thing. What you have to do is live life one day at a time." At present, Dr. Noel-Mendez is Di­rec­tor, Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ty at BHP Bil­li­ton Trinidad and To­ba­go, han­dling a va­ri­ety of in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions projects. This fol­lows on five years as Di­rec­tor of Tourism for the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment, and a stint in mar­ket­ing with Proc­tor and Gam­ble in Puer­to Ri­co. "Most of my ca­reer has had some el­e­ment of com­mu­ni­ca­tions," she says, cit­ing her ear­ly affin­i­ty for lan­guage and com­mu­ni­ca­tions for hav­ing in­flu­enced her ca­reer to date. Her stud­ies in lan­guages at St. Au­gus­tine Girls' High School led to a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship, which took her to UWI, St. Au­gus­tine for a first de­gree in So­ci­ol­o­gy and Man­age­ment, which she ob­tained with First Class Ho­n­ours and was named Stu­dent of the Year. Af­ter ful­fill­ing the first part of her schol­ar­ship-man­dat­ed oblig­a­tion to work lo­cal­ly, she took up a Rhodes schol­ar­ship to study at Ox­ford, where she ob­tained her PhD in Man­age­ment. There, she was named Ju­nior Dean of her Col­lege, a lead­er­ship role among stu­dents aimed at sup­port­ing oth­er stu­dents. She re­turned to T&T in 1997.

As a woman per­form­ing in a high-lev­el po­si­tion in one of the most pres­ti­gious com­pa­nies in the en­er­gy in­dus­try, one would imag­ine she faces a lot of op­po­si­tion, covert or oth­er­wise, sim­ply by rea­son of her gen­der, but Dr. Noel-Mendez is em­phat­ic that she has nev­er en­coun­tered nor en­ter­tained the idea of such a prob­lem. "BHP Bil­li­ton demon­strates equal­i­ty of op­por­tu­ni­ty from the per­spec­tive of re­spect for peo­ple's abil­i­ties, and their as­pi­ra­tions to ad­vance their ca­reer. Our glob­al char­ter is very clear on re­spect for all, and I per­son­al­ly have found that to be true." This doesn't mean that she doesn't think that there are women out there who have to deal with gen­der is­sues in the work­place every day. "Glob­al­ly, there is no doubt that some women be­lieve there are chal­lenges," she be­gins, but goes on to say that there is no rea­son sex­ism should be per­ceived as a greater chal­lenge than any oth­er. "Chal­lenges ex­ist in many spheres. There is a young man, Kern Tyson, who is vi­su­al­ly im­paired, who I first saw on a gov­ern­ment pro­gramme, who has nev­er let his sit­u­a­tion stop him. He's a broad­cast­er and a crick­et com­men­ta­tor, and very ac­tive in what he has to do."

Her ad­vice to women, then, is that their chal­lenges are no dif­fer­ent from any­one else's. "There are thou­sands of chal­lenges which we have to face through­out our lives. The mag­ic is to over­come them. If the moun­tain didn't have folds, if it were smooth, we couldn't climb it. We would skate to the bot­tom. Bet­ter you have a chal­lenge to make you strong, than no chal­lenge at all." These 'folds in the moun­tains', as she calls them, are sim­ply hand and foot-holds pro­vid­ed by God for us to use to move up. "We have to find out how God is go­ing to let us fig­ure it out this time." Brought up in a deeply re­li­gious Catholic fam­i­ly, she looks to Je­sus' jour­ney for in­spi­ra­tion when­ev­er faced with moun­tains of her own. "We must live in spir­it, faith and be­lief. All those who love the Lord will see things come to­geth­er."

She ex­press­es her love for her God in every­thing she does. Tu­tored in mu­sic by Lenore Sama­roo at St. Au­gus­tine Girls' High School, and al­so by Louise McIn­tosh, she is a for­mer pan­nist with Ex­o­dus with four Panora­mas un­der her belt. She con­tributes her mu­si­cal tal­ent to the church, play­ing both the steel pan and the key­boards. She en­cour­ages her two young sons to be­come in­volved in the mu­sic as well, and sees her play­ing as a way to hope­ful­ly touch the lives of oth­ers. Even the brevi­ty and un­pre­dictabil­i­ty of life gives Dr. Noel-Mendez strength and mo­ti­va­tion. "We are not promised to­mor­row. We are not promised the next hour. We are promised now, and we are in­struct­ed by God to cel­e­brate now, and give Him glo­ry now. He gives us suf­fi­cient for NOW." But she ad­mits that liv­ing in the now is dif­fi­cult, be­cause we are hu­man. Asked to share ad­vice with oth­er women about man­ag­ing both fam­i­ly and ca­reer, she us­es sim­ple, di­rect verbs. "Pray. Trust. Bal­ance. Take care of your­self. Un­der­stand that you are giv­en what you must han­dle, and you are giv­en it to han­dle well. If you want to be strong, ex­er­cise your mind and spir­it and work smart. Every day is a new gift, a bless­ing that will be lived once. Thank God. Em­brace it. Give of your best. What you give comes back to you in time, many-fold."