Car­ol Quash

As ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Ju­di­cial Ed­u­ca­tion In­sti­tute, Genevieve Melanie Julien sup­ports the cu­ra­tion of pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment and train­ing pro­grammes for judges and ju­di­cial of­fi­cers. As a moth­er, she has and con­tin­ues to cu­rate and im­part many lessons in val­ues, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and re­spect.

“I am the moth­er of three boys, 27, 19, and 16. I en­joy rais­ing boys, but it’s not an easy job,” she told WE.

Julien be­lieves God gave her that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and she takes it very se­ri­ous­ly.

“I al­ways tell them, ‘your first class­room is your home.’ So a lot of train­ing takes place in my home. I be­lieve in the ap­pli­ca­tion of knowl­edge, so I live my life as a demon­stra­tion to them. I look for teach­able mo­ments when I can ex­plain why I would do what I do and why I rec­om­mend that they do this par­tic­u­lar thing, with­out tak­ing away their voice, be­cause they have to live their own life. I just try to be their guide,” she said, most times go­ing be­yond the call to make sure they keep on the right path. But truth be told, even be­fore she took on the pres­ti­gious role of moth­er­hood, Julien had a pen­chant for giv­ing more than was re­quired of her.

Last month, she was pre­sent­ed with the 2026 Proud­ly Uni­ver­si­ty of New Brunswick (UNB) Vol­un­teer of the Year Award by the UNB Alum­ni As­so­ci­a­tion.

She said, “The award was recog­ni­tion for my ser­vice to the alum­ni, even be­yond what I did as a pro­gramme co­or­di­na­tor while I was at Roytec.” It al­so recog­nised the re­la­tion­ships she had built and for keep­ing the UNB brand alive in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Her over two decades of ded­i­ca­tion to acad­e­mia and ed­u­ca­tion­al ad­min­is­tra­tion were giv­en not be­cause she had to, but sim­ply be­cause she saw it as her min­istry.

The UNB, Cana­da grad­u­ate said the uni­ver­si­ty has had the longest transna­tion­al part­ner­ship in T&T with Roytec.

“Around 1998, there­abouts, Roytec was the train­ing arm of RBTT (Roy­al Bank of T&T). In 2006, when the Roy­al Bank of Cana­da re­turned to Trinidad and To­ba­go, it di­vest­ed non-fi­nan­cial units, and so Roytec then be­came a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.”

Back then, Julien was re­spon­si­ble for co­or­di­nat­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Brunswick pro­grammes in T&T. She soon recog­nised that stu­dents, in par­tic­u­lar the ones study­ing for the Bach­e­lor’s in Ed­u­ca­tion de­gree, need­ed sup­port be­yond her ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port.

“That re­al­i­sa­tion al­lowed me to change the way that I ap­proached how I sup­port­ed them in my role as pro­gramme co­or­di­na­tor…One of the things I recog­nised as well is that as a teacher, you have to man­age your class­room. But you’re not just man­ag­ing the stu­dents in your class­room and the lessons; you’re man­ag­ing way more than that,” emo­tion­al­ly and oth­er­wise.

Julien pro­vid­ed one-on-one coach­ing and men­tor­ing, even go­ing so far as to cre­ate work­shops that brought all stake­hold­ers to­geth­er so they could be clear on what the ex­pec­ta­tions were from each per­son.

“As you build re­la­tion­ships with peo­ple and they get com­fort­able with you, they ap­proach you when they have a need or when they have a chal­lenge or when they have ad­vice…That hap­pened very or­gan­i­cal­ly as I built my re­la­tion­ship with stu­dents and served them.”

Julien said if she came across a stu­dent with an is­sue who need­ed sup­port be­yond what she was able to of­fer, she would re­fer them to the rel­e­vant de­part­ment.

“And even be­yond that, I would ask, ‘Do you want to be re­ferred ex­ter­nal­ly? Is there some­one at your church?’ de­pend­ing on what the sit­u­a­tion was.”

Julien has a first de­gree in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion and a Mas­ter’s in Ed­u­ca­tion­al Lead­er­ship and Ad­min­is­tra­tion, and she has been in­vit­ed to de­liv­er the fea­ture ad­dress at so many grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies over the years. It is her hope that the teach­ers who she helped shape when they were stu­dents con­tin­ue to get the sup­port they need and that they would pay it for­ward to stu­dents who as­pire to be teach­ers.

“These are peo­ple who are stand­ing in front of our na­tion’s chil­dren and bring­ing up the next gen­er­a­tion.”

But her in­ter­est in peo­ple and their de­vel­op­ment does not end at her places of em­ploy­ment. The mem­bers of her church, St Thomas Parish in Ch­agua­nas and Cunu­pia, ben­e­fit from her men­tor­ship and faith.

“I am a lay min­is­ter in the An­gli­can Church, I am a men­tor in our men­tor­ship pro­gramme, I’m on the ed­u­ca­tion com­mit­tee, so I do teach lessons through­out the litur­gi­cal year, de­pend­ing on where we are in the cal­en­dar. And I do pro­vide the same guid­ance and out­reach to our young peo­ple in our church.”

She al­so sings in the choir, is a lec­tor, and is de­sign­ing a lec­tor train­ing pro­gramme for the parish.

“My priest has asked me to con­sid­er do­ing a dea­con train­ing, but if I pray about it, it’s scant­i­ly, to be hon­est, be­cause man­ag­ing that with every­thing else,” she hint­ed, would be very dif­fi­cult.

Julien has been able to use many of the neg­a­tive ex­pe­ri­ences in her life, such as di­vorce, to help oth­ers nav­i­gate the chal­lenges that they are go­ing through in their own lives.

She be­lieves it is her life’s pur­pose to bring trans­for­ma­tion to peo­ple and work­places, to bring hope and to en­sure her boys grow in­to good men.

“When you look at Trinidad and To­ba­go to­day, you could feel so hope­less with all the so­cial is­sues that we ex­pe­ri­ence. But rather than throw my voice in there as a crit­ic, I re­al­ly try to find so­lu­tions. And even if I don’t have so­lu­tions, to bring a word of hope. We can’t live this life with­out hope. I just want to leave this world bet­ter than I found it.”