British High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Har­ri­et Cross, says she did not come from a back­ground of priv­i­lege, but start­ed her jour­ney as a diplo­mat 23 years ago by cap­i­tal­is­ing on op­por­tu­ni­ties while re­main­ing her­self.

The first fe­male British High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go said while some may have at­tend­ed pri­vate schools and talked about their work in or­phan­ages in Africa to show their strate­gic skills, she was able to show how her ear­ly job ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing in a bar could be used for diplo­mat­ic work and thus, launched her ca­reer in Her Majesty's diplo­mat­ic ser­vice.

Cross, who has been run­ning the British High Com­mis­sion since she as­sumed du­ties in Sep­tem­ber 2020, out­lined the qual­i­ties of a good leader, point­ing out that he or she sur­rounds him­self or her­self with peo­ple who may bring stronger, wider-rang­ing skills to the ta­ble and who may be even smarter than the leader him­self. She added that a good leader takes re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when plans go awry.

The High Com­mis­sion­er hopes to pass on such qual­i­ties to the win­ner of the Am­bas­sador for a Day com­pe­ti­tion to be launched by the British High Com­mis­sion on Tues­day to co­in­cide with In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day. Cross made the state­ments in a re­cent in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian at her res­i­dence in Mar­aval, and in­vit­ed the youth of T&T to par­tic­i­pate in the Am­bas­sador for a Day com­pe­ti­tion, en­cour­ag­ing them to use what­ev­er skills they pos­sess to el­e­vate them­selves and make a dif­fer­ence in so­ci­ety.

“Some­times if you've come from a more dis­ad­van­taged back­ground, you think: well, diplo­ma­cy is just for rich peo­ple. That is a myth I want to dis­pel as well be­cause I didn't come from a priv­i­leged back­ground at all. Some­times when you see the out­er trap­pings of some­body's life, you think that's not for me. Don't lim­it your­self. Oth­er peo­ple in life will al­ways try and say: you're not good enough, you're not right for this job. Oth­er peo­ple will do that, don't do it to your­self,” she added.

British High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago Harriet Cross.

In­tro­duced a few years ago in British High Com­mis­sions around the world, the com­pe­ti­tion ini­tial­ly stressed the im­por­tance of fe­male diplo­mats and their work. Us­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day as a back­drop, and un­der this year's theme, “In­clu­sion”, the com­pe­ti­tion has ex­pand­ed across so­ci­ety to af­ford more young peo­ple like the vi­su­al­ly-, phys­i­cal­ly- and hear­ing-im­paired a chance to un­der­stand the du­ties of an am­bas­sador. The ini­tia­tive which for­mer­ly fo­cussed on young fe­males is now al­so open to boys and young males. Chil­dren and teens 12 to 17 years old can en­ter up to April 8 by sub­mit­ting a 250-300 word es­say or 2-s3-minute video to am­bas­sador­fora­daytt@gmail.com or to the British High Com­mis­sion, 19 St Clair Av­enue, Port-of-Spain, un­der the la­bel “Am­bas­sador for a Day 2022 Com­pe­ti­tion Sub­mis­sion”. In keep­ing with its 2022 theme, the com­pe­ti­tion wel­comes en­tries in braille and sign lan­guage.

When the win­ner is an­nounced on April 29, he or she will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to spend a day with the High Com­mis­sion­er at the end of May, gain­ing an in­sight in­to her dai­ly rou­tine.

Em­pha­sis­ing the British val­ues of free­dom and democ­ra­cy, the com­pe­ti­tion pro­motes diplo­ma­cy as cru­cial for de­vel­op­ing glob­al co­op­er­a­tion, the youth of Trinidad and To­ba­go as in­flu­encers of their coun­try's lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al im­age and girls as lead­ers and ad­vo­cates for change.

The Com­mis­sion has part­nered with the Trinidad and To­ba­go As­so­ci­a­tion for the Hear­ing Im­paired, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion and the St James Po­lice Youth Club.

Cross, who stud­ied Pol­i­tics with French at War­wick Uni­ver­si­ty and who holds a Mas­ter’s de­gree in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions from the Fletch­er School of Law and Diplo­ma­cy at Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty and an Ex­ec­u­tive Cer­tifi­cate in Man­age­ment and Lead­er­ship from MIT, said her love of peo­ple, trav­el and lan­guages came to­geth­er when she joined diplo­mat­ic ser­vice.

In re­flect­ing on her own men­tors dur­ing her ca­reer, Cross said she was grate­ful to two women, in par­tic­u­lar, who in­creased her con­fi­dence by giv­ing her a chance to prove her­self. At the UK Mis­sion to the UN in New York, she had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to move from hu­man­i­tar­i­an work to a fast-paced com­mu­ni­ca­tions role be­cause her su­pe­ri­or be­lieved in her. Ex­press­ing her grat­i­tude to a sec­ond men­tor, she re­called her first de­ci­sion as deputy am­bas­sador in charge of se­cu­ri­ty in con­flict-rid­den Yemen around 2014 when she had to find the courage to de­ny the of­fi­cer, who was her su­pe­ri­or, per­mis­sion to ven­ture out­side the city be­cause she felt it was not safe.

“She said: thank you, that's your role; to tell me that. She didn't just bull­doze over me… As a leader you have to be ready to take ad­vice and di­rec­tion from oth­er peo­ple. You should be re­cruit­ing peo­ple who have got lots of dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties that you don't have...or you won't be able to build the best team you can,” Cross said.

Cross ex­plained that she had a slight sense of what the peo­ple of Ukraine cur­rent­ly face be­cause she lat­er had to evac­u­ate her team from Yemen to Sau­di Ara­bia due to the civ­il war. She said while her Com­mis­sion con­tin­ues to keep an eye on the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in East­ern Eu­rope, oth­er projects of the Com­mis­sion re­gard­ing cli­mate change ac­tion, hu­man rights, trade and in­vest­ment – sup­port­ing British in­vest­ment in T&T and sup­port­ing T&T to ac­cess UK goods, for in­stance, are on­go­ing.

De­spite hav­ing as­sumed du­ties in the height of a pan­dem­ic, she has man­aged to take in some of T&T's rich cul­ture. She said she was im­pressed with the lev­el of ed­u­ca­tion of the pop­u­la­tion and the gen­er­al ten­den­cy to tap in­to ed­u­ca­tion­al re­sources and strive for ad­vance­ment.

Hav­ing re­cent­ly ex­pe­ri­enced as­pects of Car­ni­val for the first time, she com­mend­ed this coun­try's cul­tur­al tal­ent and the tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise, or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and project man­age­ment skills that go in­to the fes­ti­val. The avid na­ture lover said she is fas­ci­nat­ed by the bio­di­ver­si­ty in T&T and that she es­pe­cial­ly en­joys ad­mir­ing the co­conut trees that line the Ma­yaro coast­line on dri­ves to east Trinidad. She and her hus­band al­so look for­ward to the agoutis that of­ten pop up for a vis­it in her yard, she grinned.

High Commissioner Harriet Cross with Youth Vote Matters Organisation at the British High Commission.

Q&A with Har­ri­et Cross

As Trinidad and To­ba­go's first fe­male British High Com­mis­sion­er and as a cham­pi­on of girls and women in lead­er­ship roles, do you think there are spe­cial qual­i­ties that women bring to diplo­ma­cy?

I hes­i­tate to stereo­type, but I think there are dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties. Some­times lead­er­ship is de­fined by be­ing an al­pha per­son, whether male or fe­male, and you have to be a strong, di­rec­tive leader. Some­times that clas­sic lead­er­ship role is like the clas­sic al­pha male role and I think the more women you have in lead­er­ship po­si­tions who show that lead­er­ship can be done re­al­ly ef­fec­tive­ly in dif­fer­ent ways, in ways that are in­clu­sive and that de­ci­sion-mak­ing is in­clu­sive and that to have high-per­form­ing teams you've re­al­ly got to look af­ter them and pro­tect their men­tal health and en­sure that they feel em­pow­ered and all those sorts of things that are more clas­sic stereo­typ­i­cal fe­male traits; the more you've got fe­male lead­ers show­ing that's a form of lead­er­ship, then men who are not your typ­i­cal al­pha-male lead­ers feel em­pow­ered to be lead­ers that are not the old-fash­ioned, clas­sic-type lead­er­ship.

Which as­pect of the job are you most ex­cit­ed to share with the com­pe­ti­tion win­ner?

That's what I like about my job. It's got so many dif­fer­ent el­e­ments. Show­ing peo­ple what a diplo­mat does breaks down the mys­tique of it. You re­alise it's not this per­son who drifts from cock­tail meet­ing to cock­tail meet­ing or from one ne­go­ti­a­tion to an­oth­er. Some­times it's quite like prac­ti­cal man­age­ment work that I do; bud­gets, how much we spend on staffing, project work, en­ter­tain­ment, work­ing out how do I make sure my staff are em­pow­ered, day-to-day peo­ple man­age­ment skills.

So I think get­ting across that it's not al­ways ex­ter­nal-fac­ing. If you like peo­ple, there is some­thing re­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing about lead­ing a team and be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the team's hap­pi­ness and wel­fare and al­so their pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess. Show­ing some­body a well-func­tion­ing of­fice and team set up is quite im­por­tant, show­ing that it's not a mag­i­cal job, it's bro­ken down in­to dif­fer­ent parts and that you can learn how to do those things and be some­one who is a de­ci­sion-mak­er, a leader and an in­flu­encer re­gard­less of your back­ground, re­gard­less of the dis­abil­i­ties you might have.

Your of­fice stress­es that boys and young males have a role in ad­vanc­ing women's is­sues. How do you in­tend to bring more young men on board?

I think some­times when we want to em­pow­er women, we don't in­clude men in the con­ver­sa­tion as much as we should. There are lots of rea­sons why you want to get men on board. It's par­tial­ly be­cause they them­selves can feel em­pow­ered. Trinidad and To­ba­go is ac­tu­al­ly a coun­try where we don't re­al­ly talk about the chal­lenge of girls' ed­u­ca­tion be­cause girls are very well-ed­u­cat­ed here and when you look at the sta­tis­tics, it's ac­tu­al­ly the boys who don't do as well aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly. They may be­come frus­trat­ed, less able to ex­press them­selves, it may be that they turn to vi­o­lence...so mak­ing sure they have role mod­els, for eg, the St James Po­lice Youth Club is one oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tion that we've li­aised with. It's a place where young men and young women can come, be men­tored, play sports. Again, it shows them that: you are im­por­tant. So be­ing able to say to young men that you are im­por­tant, we want you to be part of the so­lu­tion and not just talk­ing about young men as part of the prob­lem, is re­al­ly im­por­tant.

Is there a par­tic­u­lar task that a high com­mis­sion­er does which the pub­lic would nev­er guess, about which you can speak?

Some­times peo­ple are re­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by the British Roy­al fam­i­ly. Some­times, for eg, af­ter the death of the Duke of Ed­in­burgh, peo­ple would send in to us at the High Com­mis­sion, gifts for the Queen, like some­body (from Trinidad) sent in some re­al­ly beau­ti­ful stamps and said: can you please pass these on to the Queen for me. And some­times they'll write beau­ti­ful long let­ters to the Queen and so we would have to think how best can we trans­mit these; should we send it di­rect­ly to Buck­ing­ham Palace, does it go via pro­to­col in Lon­don...re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing. Yeah, we re­al­ly do send them. Ab­solute­ly!

Of course, we have a con­sulate team, on the much more se­ri­ous side of things, they have to deal with re­al­ly se­ri­ous prob­lems that British peo­ple have when they're over­seas, whether it's chil­dren who are ab­duct­ed by one par­ent, peo­ple who come over­seas and don't bring their med­ica­tion with them and so they've got re­al ill­ness, some­times it's men­tal health prob­lems. So we have a team here who deal with, some­times, peo­ple's most fun­da­men­tal prob­lems.

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