Fay­ola Fras­er

“Trinidad is wall-to-wall tal­ent,” Rhon­da Glynn says, with the con­vic­tion of some­one who has spent a life­time em­body­ing the tal­ent with­in. Glynn knew who she want­ed to be at eight years old, but it took near­ly 50 years to ful­ly be­come that per­son she al­ways knew she could be. Hers is not a sto­ry shaped by chance or short­cuts, but by in­ten­tion­al choic­es, rein­ven­tion, and a re­fusal to be­lieve that time places lim­its on pos­si­bil­i­ty.

Glynn’s pro­fes­sion­al roots are sewn deep in avi­a­tion, a sec­tor that gave her the im­pe­tus to grow and seek de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, buoyed by her nat­ur­al affin­i­ty for net­work­ing. Over a ca­reer span­ning three decades, she be­came a train­er, in­ter­na­tion­al lec­tur­er, and sub­ject mat­ter ex­pert au­tho­rised to de­liv­er train­ing on be­half of the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ICAO). In the process, she made his­to­ry as the first woman with­in the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go to be­come cer­ti­fied through the ICAO In­struc­tor Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Pro­gramme - one of just six se­lect­ed from a pool of 500 world­wide. She grew from a pro­fes­sion­al to a teacher and men­tor, train­ing a large per­cent­age of the air­port staff and op­er­at­ing in an en­vi­ron­ment that re­quired at­ten­tion to de­tail as well as in­ter­per­son­al re­la­tion­ships.

By the time she was 40, Glynn was al­ready an in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­al with in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ing de­spite hav­ing left sec­ondary school with just four O’ Lev­els. Her ré­sumé, filled with glob­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and pro­fes­sion­al des­ig­na­tions, qui­et­ly chal­lenged con­ven­tion­al ideas of aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess. “You’re nev­er re­al­ly en­ter­ing a space from ze­ro,” she re­flects. “You’re al­ways bring­ing some­thing with you.” Al­though she cher­ished her many re­ward­ing years in avi­a­tion, that des­tiny she saw for her­self at on­ly eight years old con­tin­ued to draw her back, and she be­gan to vi­su­alise her next chap­ter.

At the age of 40, Glynn made the de­ci­sion to re­turn to for­mal ed­u­ca­tion. Through­out the next ten de­mand­ing years, she earned an as­so­ciate de­gree, a bach­e­lor’s de­gree in Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Man­age­ment (with Ho­n­ours) from Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and sub­se­quent­ly a Mas­ter of Sci­ence in Avi­a­tion Man­age­ment from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Ever one to find a new chal­lenge to con­quer, she be­gan her doc­tor­al stud­ies dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and is now com­plet­ing her PhD re­search ex­am­in­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween su­per­vi­sors and their sub­or­di­nates.

Along the way came a piv­otal re­al­i­sa­tion. Glynn took stock of her strengths, blend­ed decades of avi­a­tion ex­per­tise with in­sights from her aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney and a course in glob­al en­tre­pre­neur­ship, with a grow­ing pas­sion for fe­male en­tre­pre­neur­ship. She saw too many women op­er­at­ing from scarci­ty, build­ing busi­ness­es de­signed to sur­vive rather than to scale.

At 55, she launched Zoma Busi­ness So­lu­tions, with “Zoma” mean­ing in­spired. Draw­ing on near­ly three decades in a high­ly reg­u­lat­ed, glob­al in­dus­try, Glynn ap­plied her lessons learned in avi­a­tion to en­tre­pre­neur­ship. Zoma em­pow­ers women-led busi­ness­es by blend­ing in­no­v­a­tive train­ing and cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy to meet clients’ unique needs. Glynn of­fers cus­tomised strate­gies, one-on-one coach­ing, and prac­ti­cal guid­ance on scal­ing, pric­ing, brand­ing, and us­ing da­ta ef­fec­tive­ly. Her mis­sion is clear: to help women mon­e­tise ex­ist­ing busi­ness mod­els with­out fear, stress, or over­whelm.

The im­pact has been tan­gi­ble. Glynn has helped se­cure $250,000 in NED­CO fund­ing for a client—the max­i­mum for start-up com­pa­nies; re­brand­ed busi­ness­es in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines; sup­port­ed a small air­line, and im­proved ef­fi­cien­cy and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for a fixed-base avi­a­tion op­er­a­tor. More re­cent­ly, she en­tered a col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ship with a Trinida­di­an woman based in In­dia, launch­ing a year-long, con­tain­er-style in­cu­ba­tion pro­gramme that re­in­forces her be­lief that en­tre­pre­neur­ship, like avi­a­tion, thrives in a glob­al vil­lage.

The pan­dem­ic, how­ev­er, test­ed her fledg­ling busi­ness. Overnight, in-per­son work­shops dis­ap­peared and, as Glynn puts it, “peo­ple weren’t peo­pling.” Post-pan­dem­ic re­al­i­ties forced her to close her brick-and-mor­tar op­er­a­tions, a de­ci­sion that was emo­tion­al­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly dif­fi­cult. Yet avi­a­tion had pre­pared her for piv­otal mo­ments like this. “I was 40 when I rein­vent­ed my­self,” she says, em­body­ing fear­less­ness and re­solve. To­day, she stands on the brink of build­ing an en­tire­ly dig­i­tal agency, piv­ot­ing once again.

En­tre­pre­neur­ship, Glynn in­sists, is of­ten iso­lat­ing, es­pe­cial­ly for women. “We weren’t taught how to build re­la­tion­ships,” she says. “We’re con­di­tioned to com­pete with each oth­er in­stead of col­lab­o­rate.” In re­sponse to these so­cial­ly in­grained norms in fe­male re­la­tion­ships, she cre­at­ed in­vi­ta­tion-on­ly Pow­er Cir­cle net­work­ing events for women, de­signed with a clear strat­e­gy and pur­pose.

That same in­ten­tion shapes her up­com­ing Fund­able Busi­ness Lab, a two-day in­ten­sive fo­cused on pric­ing, po­si­tion­ing, and cap­i­tal readi­ness for fe­male en­tre­pre­neurs. While women start rough­ly 30 per cent of SMEs and MSMEs in Trinidad and To­ba­go, on­ly about 1 per cent re­ceive ad­e­quate fund­ing. Many, Glynn notes, do not know how to price their ser­vices and can’t con­fi­dent­ly speak the lan­guage of mon­ey, leav­ing them vul­ner­a­ble to small loans with high in­ter­est rates. Draw­ing on her own six-month in­ten­sive stud­ies with Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, where she was one of 11,000 women se­lect­ed glob­al­ly, she aims to teach women how to po­si­tion them­selves for growth and fund­ing, not just sur­vival.

For Glynn, this work is about more than busi­ness; rather, it is about choice. “Suc­cess doesn’t come by chance, it comes by choice,” she says. In a dig­i­tal world where the play­ing field is in­creas­ing­ly lev­el, she be­lieves Trinida­di­ans have the tal­ent and abil­i­ty to com­pete glob­al­ly if they de­cide to do so. By of­fer­ing full and par­tial schol­ar­ships to her up­com­ing Lab, she is de­ter­mined that ac­cess, not mon­ey, will de­fine who gets a seat at the ta­ble.

For Glynn, the work is sim­ple yet still rad­i­cal: en­sure more women have the con­fi­dence, cap­i­tal, and com­mu­ni­ty to claim their seat at the ta­ble, and rein­vent them­selves as many times as need­ed.