FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

Ki­ran Ma­haraj is a mul­ti­tal­ent­ed, ver­sa­tile leader in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, whose ca­reer has spanned many pro­fes­sion­al pur­suits, in­clud­ing busi­ness lead­er­ship, me­dia, events man­age­ment and film.

At present, she is the Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, the past pres­i­dent of the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, and the past pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA), hav­ing served three con­sec­u­tive terms. Ma­haraj has claimed her right­ful place as one of our 23 Women to Watch in 2023 charged with the tena­cious pur­suit of her goals and her im­pres­sive achieve­ment across a range of dis­ci­plines.

Ma­haraj was raised in Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas, at­tend­ed Holy Faith Con­vent in Cou­va and stud­ied Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture and Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. Af­ter com­plet­ing her MBA at the School of Busi­ness and Com­put­er Sci­ence, her cu­rios­i­ty and yearn­ing for knowl­edge led her abroad, to New York Uni­ver­si­ty, where she re­ceived a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Events Man­age­ment, and to Har­vard, from which she re­ceived cer­tifi­cates in Ef­fec­tive Me­dia Strat­e­gy and Busi­ness of En­ter­tain­ment Me­dia and Sports.

One might won­der how Ma­haraj has con­sis­tent­ly man­aged this broad spec­trum of in­ter­ests, but she re­mains adamant in her cu­rios­i­ty, “want­i­ng to know as much as I can about any­thing that piques my in­ter­est”.

Hav­ing been bit­ten by the me­dia bug while she worked at a ra­dio sta­tion as a sum­mer job dur­ing her uni­ver­si­ty days, Ma­haraj lasered her fo­cus in­to jour­nal­ism, and be­gan work­ing at a ra­dio sta­tion, Ra­dio 90.5 - The Peo­ple’s Sta­tion. Af­ter a short stint work­ing at the sta­tion, Ma­haraj de­cid­ed to hand in her res­ig­na­tion, as the sta­tion was not per­form­ing well and she had re­ceived an­oth­er vi­able of­fer. Her res­ig­na­tion took a 360 de­gree turn, how­ev­er, when she was of­fered the po­si­tion of Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of the same sta­tion at on­ly 23 years old.

“This was the biggest de­ci­sion of my life,” she re­mem­bers, “giv­ing up my stress-free ear­ly twen­ties to take on such a big re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.”

In­deed, this was no or­di­nary task for such a young per­son, but Ma­haraj rose to the oc­ca­sion fear­less­ly, know­ing that the po­ten­tial re­ward would be greater than any risk.

The suc­cess of re­vamp­ing Ra­dio 90.5, which ul­ti­mate­ly be­came the lead­ing ra­dio sta­tion in T&T in the In­di­an/Bol­ly­wood for­mat is one of Ma­haraj’s ca­reer high­lights, but did not come with­out its chal­lenges. She re­calls hav­ing a very small staff, lim­it­ed re­sources, and gain­ing recog­ni­tion and re­spect as a young, fe­male man­ag­er as three of the ma­jor ob­sta­cles.

“As a young pro­fes­sion­al woman, you have to have a lot of bel­ly,” she as­serts, and en­cour­ages women to em­ploy her own ethos of “be­ing a war­rior not a wor­ri­er,” which has been her North Star in dif­fi­cult times.

Learn­ing from old­er staff, and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly chal­leng­ing the sys­tem where nec­es­sary are both ways she rec­om­mends young women stay true to them­selves in their pro­fes­sion­al pur­suits.

Ma­haraj has al­so sur­vived many chal­lenges by stay­ing con­nect­ed to her God and cre­ator, who has giv­en her the strength to face dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances.

In 2004, Ma­haraj be­gan brain­storm­ing her next piv­otal project, Heart­beat Ra­dio for Women, which was launched in 2005, as the world’s first women’s ra­dio. The de­sire to launch this sta­tion came from her fam­i­ly, which con­sists of a lin­eage of strong, in­de­pen­dent women, her moth­er hav­ing nine sis­ters.

“My fam­i­ly is a re­al Tri­ni callaloo, di­verse women both re­li­gious­ly and eth­ni­cal­ly,” who, al­though di­verse, faced many of the sim­i­lar is­sues. Thus, Heart­beat Ra­dio was born, to cater to all women, and con­nect with women in their re­al day-to-day lives through pro­gram­ming.

The sta­tion’s tagline “Ra­dio for women…and the men who love them” was de­vel­oped af­ter a man called in to ex­press how much bet­ter he un­der­stood and was able to sup­port his wife and daugh­ters be­cause of the sta­tion’s pro­gram­ming. Learn­ing about women’s is­sues in the men­tal and phys­i­cal spheres was an op­por­tu­ni­ty for him to de­vel­op greater grace and pa­tience in his fam­i­ly unit, and con­se­quent­ly im­proved his re­la­tion­ship with the women in his fam­i­ly.

Ma­haraj al­so re­ceived pos­i­tive feed­back in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, from the Amer­i­can Women in Ra­dio and Tele­vi­sion (AWRT), a non­prof­it or­ga­ni­za­tion for women in broad­cast­ing in­dus­tries. The or­ga­ni­za­tion, awed by her sta­tion, in­vit­ed her to be a guest speak­er at their meet­ing in Capi­tol Hill, Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Aside from her im­pres­sive pro­fes­sion­al pur­suits, Ma­haraj is a ded­i­cat­ed moth­er to her now 24-year old son, who she de­scribes af­fec­tion­ate­ly as an “amaz­ing young man.”

“I com­plete­ly en­joy moth­er­hood,” she says, “I knew it would re­quire sac­ri­fice, but my son is worth it.”

Al­though she is a sin­gle moth­er, Ma­haraj has leaned on the sup­port of her own moth­er in rais­ing her son, and cred­its her moth­er’s as­sis­tance with al­low­ing her to strike a bal­ance of as­sur­ance that her son was well tak­en care of, and con­tin­ued pur­suit of ca­reer ad­vance­ment. De­scrib­ing her sup­port sys­tem as her “per­son­al board of di­rec­tors”, Ma­haraj has found emo­tion­al, men­tal, phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al bal­ance by sur­round­ing her­self with a lov­ing com­mu­ni­ty of friends and fam­i­ly who bear her up in so many ways.

Ki­ran Ma­haraj is not a woman who fits neat­ly in­to any spe­cif­ic cat­e­go­ry, and she prefers it that way. Rec­og­nized by the US Em­bassy in 2018 for her ded­i­ca­tion, pas­sion, and sac­ri­fice, Ma­haraj was award­ed the Em­bassy POS “Woman of Courage” award.

Ded­i­cat­ed to men­tor­ing young peo­ple, she ad­vis­es women to “be­lieve in your­self, find a good bal­ance, and don’t let any­body bring you down.”

Ma­haraj con­tin­ues to serve her fam­i­ly, com­mu­ni­ty and coun­try by work­ing re­lent­less­ly to break new ground and carve new paths for women in T&T.

Fay­ola K J Fras­er is a pro­fes­sion­al in the in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment are­na. She has a BA in In­ter­na­tion­al (Mid­dle East­ern) Stud­ies and an MSc in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions and Diplo­ma­cy from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.