Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Ghenere Heer­ah’s life comes down to four words: Faith, fam­i­ly, fe­males, and the fu­ture.

Her faith has been the cen­tre­piece of her life, with her fam­i­ly be­ing the bedrock. Her very name, Ghenere, means God’s gift. She’s spent the last decade fo­cus­ing on in­spir­ing women to live their best lives.

Her fo­cus has moved to en­sur­ing the fu­ture of our world is giv­en the nec­es­sary tools to live and lead. That fo­cus on Gen­er­a­tion Z (born be­tween 1997 and 2012) has led her to New York City, where she is cur­rent­ly over­see­ing her most re­cent project sup­port­ing the lead­er­ship of Mor­ri­son Men­tors, a STEAM (Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­gi­neer­ing, Arts and Math­e­mat­ics) or­gan­i­sa­tion based in Long Is­land.

She man­ages “Next Gen” teams that are help­ing young stu­dents trans­form their lives to meet the de­mands of the fu­ture through tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion.

‘Suc­cess looks dif­fer­ent­ly for dif­fer­ent peo­ple’

Heer­ah’s work, how­ev­er, start­ed in her own coun­try–T&T. Ten years ago, she found­ed her non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, Women of El­e­gance, but not be­fore she diced with a psy­chol­o­gy de­gree.

“My mom used to tell me ‘peo­ple who are coun­sel­lors and psy­chol­o­gists are lis­ten­ers; you are a talk­er,’” Heer­ah re­mem­bered as she laughed.

Hav­ing en­rolled in psy­chol­o­gy, she ad­mit­ted to not do­ing well in the course and ul­ti­mate­ly dropped out.

As she watched her friends grad­u­ate, it hurt, and she was con­sumed with the feel­ings that come with dis­ap­point­ment and fail­ure. While Heer­ah might have strug­gled with her psy­chol­o­gy de­gree, men­tal­ly she was tough.

It was out of that strug­gle to find her­self that she would launch Women of El­e­gance. At 21, she held the first edi­tion of the event at the then Jaf­fa at the Oval restau­rant. For­mer CNC3 news an­chor Gol­da Lee Bruce de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress.

Heer­ah re­called, “I was look­ing at the room, and I was won­der­ing to my­self, what did all of these adults come to hear what a 21-year-old has to say? Af­ter the event, every­body came to me ask­ing, ‘When is the next event?’ I was think­ing of putting on just one event, but God saw an en­tire or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

Now, at 31, Heer­ah’s non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion has grown with her over the last decade. She would go on to es­tab­lish Pink Gems, pro­duc­ing a se­ries of fea­tures high­light­ing breast can­cer sur­vivors. Her third ini­tia­tive was HUGS (Hold­ing Up Girls Stan­dards), trav­el­ling the length and breadth of T&T and talk­ing to girls about main­tain­ing a high stan­dard for them­selves.

Build­ing on the suc­cess of HUGS, she would launch HUBS (Hold­ing Up Boys Strengths), al­low­ing boys to take the lead. For the young woman who had once been wal­low­ing over the wilt of her psy­chol­o­gy de­gree, Heer­ah’s life had tak­en on a cer­tain mean­ing and pur­pose.

She re­calls, “I ac­tu­al­ly had the mo­ment where I thought peo­ple may be grad­u­at­ing this year, but I gave birth to an en­tire com­pa­ny. I start­ed to re­alise that suc­cess looks dif­fer­ent­ly for dif­fer­ent peo­ple and that per­spec­tive changes every­thing. That’s why we must nev­er com­pare.”

Heer­ah’s rise would con­tin­ue to gar­ner na­tion­al at­ten­tion. She would be se­lect­ed as part of the Youth Min­istry’s 40 Un­der 40 Na­tion­al In­flu­encer’s Men­tor­ship Pro­gramme, in­spir­ing young peo­ple across the na­tion to live more pos­i­tive lives. She would go on to com­plete an MBA at An­glia Ruskin Uni­ver­si­ty, grad­u­at­ing as the vale­dic­to­ri­an.

A faith-filled jour­ney

Fol­low­ing that aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment, she em­barked on a mis­sion trip through the Mid­dle East and North Africa re­gion. It would change her life for­ev­er. Her ex­pe­ri­ences and en­coun­ters would fur­ther shape her spir­i­tu­al­ly and har­ness her cul­tur­al in­tel­li­gence to work in a world of dif­fer­ent be­liefs and tra­di­tions.

Every con­ver­sa­tion with Heer­ah throws up God. I had not even asked her about her faith yet, and she had al­ready men­tioned it five times. “My dad likes to say, ‘Where is God on your list? Is God num­ber one on your list?’ And he says ‘God can­not even be num­ber one on your list be­cause he needs to be the cen­tre of it all,’” she said.

Heer­ah wants more peo­ple to de­vel­op a per­son­al re­la­tion­ship with God, which she be­lieves will re­dound to their ben­e­fit.

She added, “There is a need to have, first and fore­most, a re­la­tion­ship with God. You need to see what that looks like. It’s not a rem­e­dy for in­ti­ma­cy. It’s a lifestyle. Is it jour­nalling? Is it lis­ten­ing to wor­ship? Is it go­ing to church? It’s a lifestyle we need to have.”

Heer­ah is adamant that it is by God’s grace she has man­aged to kick on from many set­backs she has suf­fered through­out her life.

Faith first, but fam­i­ly not far be­hind

The foun­da­tion of her faith in Je­sus Christ was built by her par­ents. Fam­i­ly comes a close sec­ond to her faith. She’s the first of three chil­dren. If her sur­name sounds fa­mil­iar, it is be­cause her fa­ther is Com­man­der Garvin Heer­ah, who was once the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre and con­tin­ues to be the go-to per­son for mat­ters of na­tion­al and transna­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in the coun­try.

“I am my fa­ther. I am the fe­male ver­sion of him,” Heer­ah chuck­les. She speaks glow­ing­ly of her fa­ther’s im­pact, say­ing, “My dad has had a huge in­flu­ence on my life. He is part of the rea­son I am who I am to­day. Hav­ing a mil­i­tary back­ground, dis­ci­pline is very strong in our fam­i­ly. There are a lot of things my friends were al­lowed to do that I was not al­lowed to do. Even at this age, if there is a place where a crime has hap­pened, we can­not go to that place for like three months.”

Heer­ah de­scribes her fa­ther as strong, re­silient, and lov­ing—qual­i­ties she has adopt­ed from him.

“He is the per­fect man in my eyes,” she says. While her fa­ther is a na­tion­al fig­ure, Heer­ah said her moth­er, Lor­raine, was quite the op­po­site but equal­ly as in­flu­en­tial. She la­bels her “the en­gine room” of the fam­i­ly. Lor­raine left her job to en­sure each of her chil­dren was tak­en care of at home.

Heer­ah has heaped praise on her moth­er for her self­less act, say­ing, “Peo­ple who are work­ing eight to four can nev­er com­pare to a full-time home­mak­er be­cause there is no clock out when you’re a home­mak­er.”

For Heer­ah, her fam­i­ly has laid the foun­da­tion for the suc­cess she has had. It’s a foun­da­tion built on faith but al­so dis­ci­pline. From that foun­da­tion, Heer­ah now aims to help build, and in oth­er cas­es re­build, the lives of those she en­coun­ters on life’s jour­ney.

“It’s nev­er about mak­ing a name for me but about mak­ing Christ’s name known,” she says.

As the world con­fronts the chal­lenges of the 21st cen­tu­ry, Heer­ah be­gins the task of equip­ping the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers who will have to solve those prob­lems, equip­ping them with the new tools re­quired to live and thrive in an AI era that the world is still very much new to.