Nek­isha Alexan­der-Cae­sar

Nek­isha.alexan­der@guardian.co.tt

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way

and shows the way.”

John C. Maxwell

Born and raised in a com­mu­ni­ty that is stig­ma­tised and ridiculed, Crys­tal Came­jo Pon­trel­li de­cid­ed at a very ear­ly age that she was go­ing to be the change she want­ed to see. Grow­ing up in East Port of Spain, Crys­tal felt the sting of com­mu­ni­ty ne­glect, which cre­at­ed the for­mu­la for a life full of chal­lenges.

Ex­pec­ta­tions were very low, ex­am­ples were few and far be­tween, if any at all, and the an­tic­i­pat­ed out­come was one of ab­ject fail­ure. Crys­tal saw the re­al­i­ty of youths that felt left be­hind and took up the man­tle to make a dif­fer­ence and forge a path that her peers can fol­low.

THE JOUR­NEY TO SUC­CESS

De­ter­mined that her ge­og­ra­phy will not be the au­thor of her bi­og­ra­phy, Crys­tal de­cid­ed she had to do some­thing about the cy­cle of gen­er­a­tional and com­mu­ni­ty trau­ma that seemed to be the nor­mal way of life for most. She pur­sued a ca­reer in Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty and al­so worked as a Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cer. How­ev­er, Crys­tal was de­ter­mined to con­tin­ue on a path of progress that can pos­i­tive­ly im­pact the lives of oth­ers. In May 2015, Crys­tal re­ceived an ac­cep­tance let­ter from Mon­roe Col­lege in NY, USA. Ex­cit­ed about the news yet baf­fled as to how it all un­fold­ed, Crys­tal seized the mo­ment and shared the news with one of her men­tors who sup­port­ed fund rais­ing ven­tures, to as­sist with her tran­si­tion to the Amer­i­can acad­e­my. Fi­nal­ly, she start­ed to see the light of hope en­ter­ing her life.

WALK­ING IN HER PUR­POSE

In 2017 Crys­tal topped her class at Mon­roe Col­lege, NY with a 4.0 GPA and earned a bach­e­lor’s de­gree in crim­i­nal jus­tice with con­cen­tra­tion in Le­gal Stud­ies. She was the first per­son in her fam­i­ly home in Gon­za­les, east Port-of-Spain to grad­u­ate from col­lege. In 2019 she cupped the same ti­tle this time top­ping her class with a 4.0 GPA with a Mas­ter’s in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion with Fi­nance con­cen­tra­tion.

This achieve­ment led to her be­ing a part of a 10 per­cent of grad­u­ates elect­ed as a mem­ber of the Nu Omega Chap­ter in recog­ni­tion of high scholas­tic at­tain­ment by the pres­ti­gious Delta Mu Delta In­ter­na­tion­al Hon­or So­ci­ety in Busi­ness. Crys­tal was al­so named the 2019 King Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness and Ac­count­ing Dean’s Award Re­cip­i­ent. This pro­pelled Crys­tal to fur­ther ad­vance her de­sire to men­tor and coach young peo­ple and used her net­work­ing skill along with her new po­si­tion to men­tor stu­dents at Mon­roe Col­lege. But she didn’t for­get where she came from and em­barked on projects that can al­so ben­e­fit youths in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Crys­tal shares, “Peo­ple would say noth­ing good would come from ‘be­hind the bridge’ and we would not make some­thing of our­selves, but I al­ways knew I was des­tined for some­thing bet­ter.”

In part­ner­ship with or­gan­i­sa­tions aligned to her pur­pose, their teams spon­sored over 50 Young Men and Women across Trinidad & To­ba­go to be cer­ti­fied in Youth Men­tal Health First Aid. This train­ing al­lows for each per­son to have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of men­tal health chal­lenges from a youth per­spec­tive and to help elim­i­nate the bar­ri­ers of stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion against men­tal health. Crys­tal is al­so a fi­nan­cial spon­sor for a young woman of East POS, who is cur­rent­ly study­ing Com­put­er Sci­ence at St. John’s Uni­ver­si­ty in Queens NY.

PHE­NOM­E­NAL WOMAN

Crys­tal is an in­no­v­a­tive mo­ti­va­tor and life chang­er, built to in­spire hope through her hon­est and game chang­ing ap­proach to life. She has es­tab­lished her­self as a well sought-af­ter con­sul­tant in busi­ness, Youth Em­pow­er­ment Strate­gies and High­er Ed­u­ca­tion. Her com­mit­ment to em­pow­er­ing in­di­vid­u­als is sur­passed on­ly by her Faith in God and ded­i­ca­tion to her fam­i­ly.

She notes her sto­ry of be­com­ing who she is to­day, is one of re­silience and the unadul­ter­at­ed grace of God. There­fore, her ad­vice to young women on ful­fill­ing their full po­ten­tial is “Every dream that you have locked up in­side of you can be achieved. Take that leap of faith, be­lieve in your­self, be in­ten­tion­al and un­apolo­getic about the vi­sion that you car­ry. God opens doors for those who dili­gent­ly seek him out for guid­ance. Stay fo­cussed on the goal ahead. It’s not over un­til you win.”