Fay­ola Fras­er

Max­ine Williams can be found on the TT$50 bill, with a smile char­ac­ter­is­tic of the joy of the Car­ni­val sea­son as she cross­es the stage in a Bri­an Mac­Far­lane cos­tume.

Williams is a Wood­brook na­tive, re­gard­ing her­self as a “deep Wood­brook per­son,” her par­ents both hail­ing from the same street in Wood­brook. Al­though she re­sides in Cal­i­for­nia at present, her sparkling per­son­al­i­ty has nev­er lost a shred of the dy­namism, warmth and vi­brance of Tri­ni peo­ple and cul­ture.

De­spite her friends’ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of her as in­tense, Williams says that she is mere­ly in­fi­nite­ly “in­quis­i­tive” and a life­long learn­er. One would there­fore not be sur­prised that, armed with such traits, she cur­rent­ly holds the high rank­ing po­si­tion of Chief Di­ver­si­ty of­fi­cer at Meta, for­mer­ly known as Face­book, a multi­na­tion­al Amer­i­can tech­nol­o­gy cor­po­ra­tion that brings to­geth­er apps such as Face­book, In­sta­gram and What­sApp, un­der one brand.

A St. Joseph’s Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, alum­na, she is a grad­u­ate of Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, where she cu­rat­ed her own ma­jor in Caribbean Stud­ies, borne out of the need for greater recog­ni­tion and un­der­stand­ing of the re­gion, that is equal to the same fo­cus giv­en to the study of oth­er re­gions.

Up­on grad­u­at­ing from Yale, she mi­grat­ed to Haiti, where she taught a self-in­tro­duced course in Caribbean stud­ies at a high school, un­til the oust­ing of for­mer Pres­i­dent Aris­tide in a coup d’état.

She sub­se­quent­ly re­lo­cat­ed to Ox­ford, as a Rhodes Schol­ar, where she grad­u­at­ed from law with first-class ho­n­ours. She sub­se­quent­ly took the helm of the Caribbean Hu­man Rights Net­work, a re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion based in Bar­ba­dos, where she worked on a va­ri­ety of cas­es with sev­er­al lawyers, in­clud­ing cham­pi­oning the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. Fol­low­ing this, she re­turned to Trinidad, where she prac­tised law in Cham­bers, rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous unions, com­pa­nies, state en­ti­ties and banks.

While in Trinidad, she pur­sued an­oth­er great pas­sion of hers – the­atre - get­ting in­volved in host­ing and act­ing, be­com­ing a fa­mil­iar face to reg­u­lar view­ers of the then wild­ly pop­u­lar soap opera se­ries, West­wood Park. She con­fessed that she had to jug­gle many hats, fre­quent­ly on stage all night and then in court in the day­time.

Williams chuck­led as she re­called that judges would oc­ca­sion­al­ly re­mark: “Ms Williams, I turned you off at 11 o’clock last night, I am sur­prised you’re here.”

Her mul­ti­tude of pas­sions even­tu­al­ly led her to New York, where she was in­vit­ed to con­sid­er over­see­ing the di­ver­si­ty ef­forts at a law firm, mark­ing her in­tro­duc­tion to the con­cept of di­ver­si­ty in the cor­po­rate con­text. In 2013, a sig­nif­i­cant turn­ing point in her life emerged from Face­book’s search for some­one to ex­e­cute their di­ver­si­ty ef­forts, which launched Williams in­to the next decade of her ca­reer.

Many com­pa­nies tend to prof­fer its di­verse work­force as con­sti­tut­ing the to­tal­i­ty of their di­ver­si­ty ef­forts, and fre­quent­ly pur­sue di­ver­si­ty sole­ly for com­pli­ance pur­pos­es. Williams, how­ev­er, em­pha­sis­es that as she was the first per­son re­spon­si­ble for over­see­ing di­ver­si­ty at Meta (then Face­book) she was al­so en­trust­ed with the task of defin­ing what it would mean in con­crete terms, be­yond sim­ply a di­verse work­force.

At Meta, it is recog­nised that a more di­verse work­force en­ables the cre­ation of prod­ucts that are more rel­e­vant for a di­verse world. Adopt­ing this pos­ture, Williams’ ul­ti­mate ob­jec­tive is to achieve cog­ni­tive di­ver­si­ty, ex­plain­ing that “hav­ing peo­ple who think dif­fer­ent­ly work­ing in every part of the busi­ness [en­sures] that they are stronger, more cre­ative, adapt­able and able to build for the world.”

Cog­nizant of the cul­tur­al­ly and ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly di­verse na­ture of the peo­ple who use Meta’s prod­ucts, Williams be­lieves that the more di­ver­si­ty that she can lead Meta to achieve, the more suit­able their prod­ucts would be to the in­di­vid­ual users.

Williams al­so not­ed that di­ver­si­ty at Meta com­pris­es an­oth­er limb, one not com­mon with­in oth­er com­pa­nies, that per­tains to the im­me­di­ate in­te­gra­tion of di­verse per­spec­tives in the build­ing of prod­ucts. An ini­tia­tive in­tro­duced in pur­suit of this ob­jec­tive is the In­clu­sive Prod­uct Coun­cil, through which Williams us­es em­ploy­ees from dif­fer­ent back­grounds to give in­put “based on their lived ex­pe­ri­ences” to prod­uct teams.

The im­por­tance of pre­serv­ing di­ver­si­ty al­so ex­tends to Meta’s de­vel­op­ment of the Meta­verse, which it recog­nis­es as a valu­able tool in re­duc­ing ge­o­graph­ic bar­ri­ers. In­te­grat­ing di­ver­si­ty in­to one of the largest com­pa­nies in the world is no sim­ple or straight­for­ward task, but Williams has risen valiant­ly to the oc­ca­sion, in­cor­po­rat­ing her own di­verse skill set and va­ri­ety of lived ex­pe­ri­ences.

When ques­tioned about some of the chal­lenges that she has faced in the cor­po­rate space as a Black woman from the Caribbean, she as­serts that the bur­den of be­ing a mi­nor­i­ty re­quires greater ef­fort to meet an even high­er stan­dard than that re­quired of those in the ma­jor­i­ty. To nav­i­gate this dis­par­i­ty, she sug­gests that an in­di­vid­ual’s great­est as­set is be­ing you and lend­ing your au­then­tic voice.

This be­lief con­sti­tutes the foun­da­tion of the cog­ni­tive di­ver­si­ty prin­ci­ple that she safe­guards at Meta.

“I’m con­stant­ly think­ing, lis­ten­ing, learn­ing, pro­cess­ing and con­tribut­ing. As long as I keep do­ing that, the chips fall bet­ter in my favour than against me, de­spite the fact that I still car­ry these ad­di­tion­al bur­dens.”

Ref­er­enc­ing the com­pa­ny’s mot­to, “the jour­ney is on­ly one per cent fin­ished”, Williams ad­mits that al­though her work at Meta is nev­er done, she is al­so fo­cused on be­ing the cor­ner­stone of her fam­i­ly and a hands-on moth­er to her chil­dren. While the im­pact and chal­lenges of her job are bound­less, her fo­cus is steady on rais­ing “con­scious, con­sid­er­ate and con­fi­dent” chil­dren, a goal that she be­lieves will be her great­est im­pact.

Con­sid­er­ing that the pro­fes­sion­al space which she in­hibits can be all-con­sum­ing, one nat­u­ral­ly won­ders how she bal­ances it with her fam­i­ly life. Williams con­cedes that it is in­deed chal­leng­ing, but for her it is less about bal­ance and more about “cre­at­ing a life where you can get and give in pro­por­tions that are sat­is­fy­ing and ad­e­quate.”

She says that there will be times when you give more in one sphere of your life, and oth­ers when you pull back, but over­all, it is im­por­tant to be present in the space which you in­hab­it in any par­tic­u­lar mo­ment. She adds that hav­ing a part­ner who al­so shares the weight, and is ded­i­cat­ed to the fam­i­ly is in­valu­able.

Williams is a trail­blaz­er who has shat­tered many bar­ri­ers, forg­ing a path that many can fol­low. Her ad­vice to oth­er women pur­su­ing big dreams that may ap­pear un­at­tain­able is sim­ple. Just “try a ting”, a phi­los­o­phy hand­ed down to her by her moth­er.

Dri­ven by her in­ter­ests but al­so a very prag­mat­ic “need to pay the bills”, Williams ac­knowl­edges that she could nev­er have planned to be where she is right now, point­ing out that the in­ter­net was not even around when she was grow­ing up, mak­ing her jour­ney all the more un­pre­dictable. Putting in­to ac­tion this phi­los­o­phy of “try­ing a ting” has pro­pelled her fur­ther than she could have fath­omed, and she en­cour­ages oth­ers to do the same, be­cause one nev­er tru­ly knows what pos­si­bil­i­ties ex­ist be­yond self- im­posed lim­i­ta­tions.

Williams is a Tri­ni woman do­ing im­pres­sive work, and her jour­ney is a tes­ta­ment to the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of not just tak­ing chances and pur­su­ing the seem­ing­ly im­pos­si­ble, but al­so of con­fi­dent­ly oc­cu­py­ing your right­ful seat at the ta­ble.