Gillian Cal­iste

When pop­u­lar Ja­maican event host, TV pre­sen­ter and speak­er Dr Ter­ri-Karelle Reid said that she im­mersed her­self in T&T cul­ture while in the coun­try for her re­cent book tour and the first-ever Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum, she was not ex­ag­ger­at­ing. Quick­ly learn­ing the rou­tine and danc­ing with the To­ba­go Per­form­ing Arts Com­pa­ny's Mo­ri­ah dancers at the Fo­rum's wel­come re­cep­tion held at the Hy­att Re­gency, the dy­nam­ic en­tre­pre­neur tru­ly lived the T&T ex­pe­ri­ence.

"They did an en­tire en­trance, this beau­ti­ful piece and be­cause I am known for do­ing my re­search, I looked up the Mo­ri­ah dancers and I learnt about To­ba­go's an­nu­al Her­itage Fes­ti­val; learnt about this old-time wed­ding tra­di­tion, learnt about the pro­ces­sion, the dances, the sym­bol­ism," Reid told the Sun­day Guardian.

"And so, just be­fore the event start­ed, the Mo­ri­ah dancers ac­tu­al­ly taught me the Brush Back and I be­came a part of the pro­ces­sion and I thought that that was a won­der­ful cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ence, an ex­change that al­lowed me to not just en­ter a space and do my job but to be a part of the cul­ture, and that is cer­tain­ly one of the high­lights of my vis­it this time around."

On her first vis­it to T&T back in 2019, she was sure to take a walk through the Bam­boo Cathe­dral, eat bake and shark at Mara­cas, cur­ried goat roti in St James, and ex­pe­ri­ence a "stun­ning" boat tour of the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary, among oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ed­u­cat­ing her­self about top­ics and is­sues, get­ting ful­ly in­volved, be­ing flex­i­ble and cu­ri­ous, and de­vel­op­ing sol­id client re­la­tion­ships are all part of her brand, said Reid, who has pre­sent­ed pub­lic and cor­po­rate events across the Caribbean, the US, Eu­rope, and Asia.

She has al­so made a name for her­self in vir­tu­al event and TV host­ing, speak­ing, con­tent cu­ra­tion, brand sto­ry­telling and on­line brand strat­e­gy.

Dr Terri-Karelle Reid

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Dur­ing her re­cent vis­it, Reid was of­fi­cial­ly in­tro­duced to the T&T pub­lic via CNC3's morn­ing pro­gramme the Morn­ing Brew, and a cou­ple of ra­dio shows be­fore her book sign­ing fea­tur­ing her de­but pub­li­ca­tion The Brand Com­pass: The 13 C's to Build­ing your Per­son­al Brand at the Ja­maica High Com­mis­sion­er's res­i­dence, St Clair, on No­vem­ber 7. For the rest of the week, she host­ed the first Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum which aims to pro­mote re­gion­al re­silience, long-term jobs, and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

The savvy busi­ness­woman and in­flu­encer said though she nev­er had the de­sire to write a book, the ex­tra down­time dur­ing 2020 trig­gered a chain of events that would cause her to add au­thor to her many ti­tles. She de­cid­ed to de­vel­op her web­site, and ob­serv­ing that her fol­low­ers and vis­i­tors were most cu­ri­ous to learn about build­ing a brand in the dig­i­tal world, she start­ed writ­ing down­load­able re­spons­es to them and be­came so com­pre­hen­sive in her an­swers that the ex­er­cise turned in­to a book.

Reid be­lieves what makes her stand out and con­nect with peo­ple are her au­then­tic, re­lat­able na­ture, gen­uine con­cern for oth­ers, mak­ing oth­ers feel im­por­tant, and her ten­den­cy to share her in­for­ma­tion and knowl­edge. She said her at­ti­tude and ap­proach made all the dif­fer­ence in build­ing her own brand and achiev­ing her "God-or­dained suc­cess." Re­call­ing one of her ear­li­est jobs, she said that by al­low­ing her­self to be trained and be open to new ideas and ex­pe­ri­ences, she was of­fered a po­si­tion as gen­er­al man­ag­er of a gym af­ter on­ly hav­ing a pre­vi­ous sum­mer job at the fa­cil­i­ty.

Me­dia roles al­so came her way be­cause she lis­tened to ad­vice. Told that she was bub­bly, per­son­able and ar­tic­u­late, Reid heed­ed urg­ings to au­di­tion for the po­si­tion of host of Dig­i­cel Ris­ing Stars, Ja­maica. Ten years lat­er, she cel­e­brates still be­ing the fa­mil­iar face of Ja­maica's most watched fam­i­ly-friend­ly show.

How­ev­er, as she ex­plained, her ca­reer plan was not al­ways in the fields of me­dia and mar­ket­ing.

Dr Terri-Karelle Reid

LEO HUDSON

Grow­ing up in Port­more on the south­east­ern coast of St Cather­ine, Ja­maica, with her grand­moth­er Mil­li­cent Au­drey "Jeanie Ba­by" Scott as the ma­tri­arch, and her moth­er Don­na-Marie Scott, Reid learnt to be po­lite and re­spect­ful but to ex­press her thoughts with­out fear of speak­ing out.

From a ten­der age, she bus­ied her­self gath­er­ing stray an­i­mals with which she con­stant­ly filled the fam­i­ly home. Both her moth­er and grand­moth­er en­cour­aged her dream to be­come a vet­eri­nar­i­an, but it was most­ly her grand­moth­er's in­flu­ence that shaped her per­son­al­i­ty. As a re­sult, she ded­i­cates her book to her.

Reid was on her way to re­al­is­ing her goal af­ter re­ceiv­ing a schol­ar­ship to pur­sue vet­eri­nary med­i­cine in Cu­ba in 2001. There, she quick­ly be­came bi-lin­gual to keep up with her cours­es. At the urg­ing of friends, dur­ing sum­mer break, she en­tered the 2005 Miss World pageant rep­re­sent­ing Ja­maica and end­ed up a Top 15 fi­nal­ist, win­ning the Peo­ple’s Choice, and en­dear­ing her­self to many for her per­son­al­i­ty and for re­tain­ing her nat­ur­al Afro hair.

Her six-year Doc­tor of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine (DVM) com­plete, the ea­ger young doc­tor re­turned to Ja­maica on­ly to be in­formed that her ac­cred­i­ta­tion was not com­pat­i­ble with that of vets in her home­land.

She had to rapid­ly switch gears and adapt to op­por­tu­ni­ties sug­gest­ed by oth­ers.

Apart from launch­ing her book, and mak­ing her mark at the pageant, Reid said be­ing the first Ja­maican fe­male to de­liv­er a TEDx talk on Sep­tem­ber 21, 2021, live in As­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, Birm­ing­ham, UK, with her daugh­ter watch­ing near­by was a high point for her. The un­con­ven­tion­al con­ver­sa­tions she had with her daugh­ter about life in her so­cial me­dia con­tent had caught the at­ten­tion of Tedx. The talk cen­tered on un­leash­ing the full po­ten­tial of chil­dren by hav­ing re­al con­ver­sa­tions with them and ap­peared on YouTube in Jan­u­ary this year.

Nev­er un­der­es­ti­mate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of your work, es­pe­cial­ly your on­line con­tent be­ing no­ticed, Reid told the Sun­day Guardian.

She was grate­ful to me­dia hous­es and es­pe­cial­ly, Ken Sim­mons of Vibe CT 105 FM for a kept promise, the Ja­maica High Com­mis­sion, Tisha Jack of TCJ Events who cre­at­ed her event space at the book sign­ing, and the founder of PRos and Comms Leisel Dou­glas who host­ed. She al­so praised the fans and well-wish­ers who had trav­elled from as far as San Fer­nan­do to pur­chase books, get them signed and have pho­tos tak­en.

"It was just a great tes­ta­ment of how Trinida­di­ans are a huge part of my on­line com­mu­ni­ty and the fact that I feel the love and sup­port from my com­mu­ni­ty no mat­ter where I go," Reid said.

Hail­ing Caribbean peo­ple as unique, re­silient peo­ple whose im­pact could be more far-reach­ing if they unit­ed, she said she sim­ply hoped to em­pow­er and in­spire oth­ers to ful­fil their dreams.

My Brand Com­pass is avail­able on Ama­zon in pa­per­back and Kin­dle.

Dr Terri-Karelle Reid poses with Guardian Media Ltd Managing Director Karrian Hepburn Malcolm and her son at the book signing.

JERMAINE DUNCAN

Q&A with Dr Ter­ri-Karelle Reid

While on your re­cent vis­it to T&T, was there any re­sponse/re­ac­tion that stood out to you?

If it is in ref­er­ence to the book, I think what stood out most to me is that there is a de­gree of un­cer­tain­ty when any en­tre­pre­neur or au­thor steps out of his or her own ter­ri­to­ry in­to an­oth­er, there is al­ways go­ing to be this un­cer­tain­ty of will I be sup­port­ed, will the crowd come, will the peo­ple show. And I am ab­solute­ly over­whelm­ing­ly moved and hum­bled by the at­ten­dance of Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans...they didn't even know me, but there was some­thing that ap­pealed to them, that com­pelled them to come the dis­tance to at­tend an event to ex­change and in­ter­act and even pur­chase. To me, that is prob­a­bly one of the great­est re­ac­tions any­one could ever choose to have.

Turn­ing to your life and pro­fes­sion­al jour­ney, please feel free to share any fond child­hood mem­o­ries.

At any one time in my house, I would have mul­ti­ple an­i­mals. It got as high as 26, and when I look back I must have been tru­ly blessed to have par­ents who al­lowed me to bring home stray an­i­mals, and who al­lowed me to fol­low my heart.

I re­mem­ber at the age of eight, I wrote to my Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al, at the time, the late Howard Cooke (who had been a min­is­ter in the Gov­ern­ment of Michael Man­ley dur­ing the 1970s) and I ex­pressed to him that I was go­ing to be­come a vet­eri­nar­i­an and that a part of be­com­ing a vet­eri­nar­i­an was build­ing this shel­ter for all the stray an­i­mals in Ja­maica and he would be very proud.

And prob­a­bly one of the nicest child­hood mem­o­ries is that he re­spond­ed and he en­cour­aged me to go for it, to work hard, that I could do it all, and I think that, on top of the en­cour­age­ment from my moth­er and grand­moth­er, ce­ment­ed and re­in­forced my dream to fol­low my ca­reer which was vet­eri­nary med­i­cine.

Dr Terri-Karelle Reid

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

How did (your pro­fes­sion­al re­al­i­ty) change on your re­turn to Ja­maica af­ter com­plet­ing your DVM de­gree in Cu­ba and how did you re­cov­er from your pit­falls and be­gin to redi­rect your life? Were you ever on the verge of giv­ing up and if so, what kept you go­ing?

Did I ever feel like giv­ing up is prob­a­bly one of the most asked ques­tions when peo­ple ask how did you man­age such re­jec­tion be­cause you've worked so hard, and now this door has been slammed in your face?

I guess an­oth­er lay­er is that you can be la­belled as a fail­ure, you're not ac­tu­al­ly prac­tis­ing what you pur­sued. For me though, I nev­er felt like giv­ing up, I didn't la­bel my­self as a fail­ure. I just looked at it as a mo­ment in time when this was just not for me. I just took that mo­ment to mean God had dif­fer­ent plans for me. Though I was not aware of what that tra­jec­to­ry was go­ing to look like, I just felt with­in my­self that I would be OK and for me, re-fram­ing and per­spec­tive and how I talk to my­self are very im­por­tant for me. I told my­self: now that that door has closed, you have to leave your­self open to be a blank can­vas, to as­sim­i­late, learn and grow in spaces you nev­er imag­ined you would have to.

Please talk a lit­tle about your cur­rent sta­tus, jug­gling mul­ti­ple roles in the me­dia. What qual­i­ties, and skills as a vet/sci­en­tif­ic mind do you bring to your cur­rent more cre­ative and busi­ness-ori­ent­ed roles?

...I be­lieve that knowl­edge is nev­er lost but trans­ferred. I think what I use is my lev­el of re­search and analy­sis, prac­tis­ing vet­eri­nary med­i­cine, learn­ing about the dif­fer­ent class­es of an­i­mals, co­pi­ous amounts of in­for­ma­tion...and I look at how I am able to mem­o­rise lines in sec­onds. I'm able to re­lay in­for­ma­tion. I'm able to down­load men­tal­ly lots of in­for­ma­tion, and tech­ni­cal in­for­ma­tion and I think that has helped me to dif­fer­en­ti­ate as an event host and peo­ple will find me host­ing events from fi­nance to tech to in­vest­ment. Au­di­ence mem­bers have al­ways asked me if these are ar­eas I've prac­tised in and I've told them no. It's just my abil­i­ty to as­sim­i­late and in­ter­nalise, to ques­tion and then ar­tic­u­late it to my au­di­ence.

As Miss Ja­maica World 2005, you main­tained your nat­ur­al Afro hair at the pageant held in Chi­na de­spite ad­vice to the con­trary. What were your rea­sons for do­ing this and what do you think the im­pli­ca­tions were for black and brown girls with sim­i­lar hair types look­ing on?

When I en­tered I was ac­tu­al­ly on my sum­mer break from Cu­ba. I couldn't get a job ac­tu­al­ly. I had ar­rived way too late and so, I had been ad­vised and prompt­ed to en­ter, but I nev­er did. But that year I de­cid­ed to and I en­tered as a tomboy, nat­ur­al hair, Afro puffs, hap­py-go-lucky girl from dorm thrown in­to the world of pageantry. I was able to make the top 16. I re­mem­ber many peo­ple in Ja­maica cheer­ing for me. They thought I was a new look, fresh. They thought I rep­re­sent­ed Ja­maica in terms of what a Black nat­ur­al girl looked like. There were oth­ers who felt there was no way I could win based on his­to­ry; the for­mer queens had ex­treme­ly straight hair. There were peo­ple who were con­sid­ered to be pageant ex­perts who said: we think you'd stand a bet­ter chance if you straight­ened your hair.

I de­cid­ed to main­tain my afro...I walked away with not just the Miss Ja­maica ti­tle. I won Most Tal­ent­ed, Most Con­ge­nial and Most Aware. It was this new dawn, herald­ing this new awak­en­ing of black­ness. We saw an in­crease in women and girls who had nat­ur­al hair and 4C hair. I was al­so used as a point of ref­er­ence for you to make your own des­tiny. I went to Chi­na and some peo­ple were: well, nat­ur­al hair worked lo­cal­ly, but would it work in­ter­na­tion­al­ly? I walked away in the top 15, I placed in their sec­tion­als and I al­so won Peo­ple's pub­lic vote. When I came back home, I earned the moniker "Your Ja­maican Girl," the kind of per­son who stands up for what she be­lieves in. I was nev­er con­tent­ed with some­one else's de­f­i­n­i­tion of me and I was not go­ing to start to as queen.

Your daugh­ter, Naima-Kourt­nae, is now ten years old. What lega­cy (tra­di­tions/be­hav­iours you prac­tised, mem­o­ries about you) do you want to leave to her?

My very ram­bunc­tious, pre­co­cious, em­pa­thet­ic daugh­ter is my every­thing and I think what I want to leave with her was the ba­sis of my TEDx talk. Sure I want her to be in­tel­li­gent. I want her to be able to ap­ply her­self aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, but it's not the most press­ing thing for me. I think in this world that tries to force you to con­form and that sends a lot of mes­sages every day, es­pe­cial­ly if you are fe­male, that you need to look like this, be like this, you need to fit in in or­der to make it, I want her to be brave enough to be self-aware, to un­der­stand that the pow­er she has with­in her is greater than any pow­er that ex­ists out­side of this world.

It's im­por­tant that she un­der­stand that she has pur­pose, that she is unique. She should al­ways look with­in and be proud of who she is be­com­ing. I hope that she'll al­ways be a thought­ful in­di­vid­ual in a world that fo­cus­es on ego. Last­ly, a lega­cy I want to leave her with is au­ton­o­my; to un­der­stand that she shouldn't sur­ren­der her fem­i­nine en­er­gy, her fem­i­nine pow­er, that she is the mas­ter of her des­tiny, the own­er of her body and for the choic­es she makes, she is to hold her­self ac­count­able. 

Dr Terri-Karelle Reid, right, with her mother, Donna-Marie Scott; her daughter, Naima-Kourtnae; and grandmother Millicent Audrey Scott.

ONEIL GRANT