Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

In a com­mu­ni­ca­tions ca­reer that has spanned 15 years, Nys­sa Pierre has nev­er had a task on her hands quite like this one. On Au­gust 27, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) named the T&T na­tion­al its new Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Me­dia Man­ag­er.

There is a joke that no job in West In­dies crick­et is an easy one, but there is some truth to that.

West In­dies crick­et presents its unique chal­lenges on and off the field. Es­pe­cial­ly the lat­ter. Giv­en the in­con­sis­tent per­for­mances of the re­gion­al team, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Test for­mat, Caribbean fans and stake­hold­ers have been frus­trat­ed with the state of West In­dies crick­et.

They have not shied away from voic­ing their dis­plea­sure ei­ther. As Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Me­dia Man­ag­er, Pierre will come face-to-face with such spec­ta­tors whether in the so­cial me­dia realm or the stands, and she will be tasked with man­ag­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia look­ing for an­swers on the con­tin­ued strug­gles of this once pow­er­house in the glob­al game.

From grow­ing up in Pe­tit Val­ley, Pierre’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions ca­reer would take her across sev­er­al con­ti­nents. She has worked in parts of Africa in­clud­ing Kenya, Rwan­da and Ugan­da while al­so ply­ing her trade as far as Aus­tralia and, re­cent­ly, Dubai. Though she has spent a large part of her adult life work­ing far away from home, her par­ents, Dave and He­len Pierre, re­main at the cen­tre of her life. “None of this would be pos­si­ble with­out them,” she said.

It was while work­ing in the Mid­dle East, ran­dom­ly scrolling through Twit­ter, she stum­bled across the va­can­cy ad­ver­tise­ment for CWI’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Me­dia Man­ag­er. She was back in the Caribbean and was shocked when in­vit­ed to in­ter­view.

How­ev­er, Pierre’s rise to Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Me­dia Man­ag­er of West In­dies crick­et should not be sur­pris­ing. Her work in com­mu­ni­ca­tions has nev­er been far from sports. One of her two sis­ters al­so works in sports nu­tri­tion. Nys­sa’s ex­per­tise in­cludes cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion, gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and sports, where she has col­lab­o­rat­ed with cur­rent and for­mer West In­dies play­ers, crick­et leagues, Olympians, and state sports agen­cies.

In 2012, she worked with the Sport Com­pa­ny as its sport ex­ec­u­tive in the com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment. She came on board two months be­fore the start of the Lon­don 2012 Olympics. She would play a piv­otal role in de­vel­op­ing the ath­letes’ brands while work­ing with them on me­dia train­ing and their use of so­cial me­dia.

The year be­fore, she was the com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er for the Caribbean’s first low-fare air­line, RED­jet, work­ing out of Bar­ba­dos. Both those ex­pe­ri­ences, tied with her ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground from uni­ver­si­ties in Cana­da, Bel­gium and the Unit­ed States, would pre­pare her for this role she now takes up with West In­dies crick­et.

As a woman hold­ing the post, she is hap­py there is rep­re­sen­ta­tion for women off the field as well as on, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to the se­nior man­age­ment of West In­dies crick­et.

She has two main goals. “I don’t see it as a Caribbean job. I see it as an in­ter­na­tion­al job but based in the Caribbean. We need to see our­selves as tru­ly Caribbean-grown and an in­ter­na­tion­al brand. I’ve trav­elled all over the globe and peo­ple may not know Trinidad and To­ba­go, Bar­ba­dos or Guyana, but if they hear West In­dies, it’s an im­me­di­ate iden­ti­fi­er,” Pierre told the WE Mag­a­zine last week.

Her aim is to al­so tell the sto­ries of both the re­gion and play­ers be­yond the field of play. She added, “I would re­al­ly like to see our sto­ries go be­yond crick­et. You look at the sto­ry of some­one like Akeal Ho­sein grow­ing up in Laven­tille to where he is now. These are sto­ries that peo­ple all around the world, may not recog­nise Laven­tille, but peo­ple know a rags-to-rich­es sto­ry or a pull one­self up by one’s boot­straps sto­ry. Look at Nicholas Pooran who went through that ac­ci­dent many years ago. Many peo­ple can re­late to a med­ical emer­gency, med­ical trau­ma with­in their fam­i­ly, and some­how this per­son has found the strength in life.”

Across the re­gion, Pierre will find many such sto­ries with West In­dies crick­eters com­ing from some of the most rur­al parts of the Caribbean. How­ev­er, she hasn’t for­got­ten the most im­por­tant stake­hold­er in West In­dies crick­et, the fans.

She added, “The frus­tra­tions, the chal­lenges, and the pas­sion, all of those things are not unique to West In­dies crick­et. Any­body who is in any way in­to sports, feel the frus­tra­tion. But, I al­so see the op­por­tu­ni­ty in not just telling the sto­ry of vic­to­ry but telling the sto­ry of the re­gion.”

Pierre said one of the rea­sons she was hap­py to take up the role is be­cause she doesn’t view the job as a pure­ly Caribbean one but an in­ter­na­tion­al role that puts the spot­light on the Caribbean.

“That’s a re­al­ly im­por­tant thing be­cause we’re not just telling our sto­ries to the Caribbean but to the world,” she re­marked.

While re­gion­al fans have been hold­ing out hope for bet­ter per­for­mances from the re­gion­al side, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­pert in Pierre sees be­yond the neg­a­tive head­lines. She added, “I think it’s im­por­tant to be clear in what we’re talk­ing about when we talk about per­for­mance. For ex­am­ple, the men’s team is cur­rent­ly third in the world in T20s. We do need to keep re­mem­ber­ing that. The women’s team con­sis­tent­ly per­forms well. It’s very easy to fo­cus on the neg­a­tives with­out re­mem­ber­ing there is a lot of good and a lot of suc­cess hap­pen­ing as we speak.” Pierre be­lieves the in­her­ent frus­tra­tion lies with the West In­dies Test team and that’s some­thing that can­not be negat­ed. The West In­dies men are cur­rent­ly sev­enth in the world rank­ings of Test crick­et.

How­ev­er, de­spite the chal­lenges her new ven­ture brings, it’s al­so an ex­cit­ing time to en­ter crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tion. The In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee last Oc­to­ber an­nounced that the sport will re­turn to the Olympic Games in Los An­ge­les in 2028 mark­ing a re­turn for the first time in 128 years.

Pierre her­self is an Olympic sup­port­er, and she loves the foot­ball World Cup as well. “This is part of his­to­ry. It’s go­ing to be re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing as a fan to see how it all plays out but al­so from this side of the ta­ble be­ing part of the man­age­ment of West In­dies to see how well whichev­er team rep­re­sents us does,” she said.

From her ear­ly days at New­town Girls’ RC to grow­ing up in St Joseph’s Con­vent Port-of-Spain, Pierre knows West In­dies crick­et in­flu­ences the lives of peo­ple in the Caribbean even if they don’t re­li­gious­ly fol­low the sport.

She con­clud­ed, “West In­dies crick­et is a unique uni­fi­er. I’m not even sure we grasp just how pow­er­ful it is. The West In­dies make-up is so dif­fer­ent from any oth­er team in the world. We’re not just talk­ing about crick­et here. We’re talk­ing about small is­lands and coun­tries, each with a unique per­spec­tive, com­ing to­geth­er to make it hap­pen, and not on­ly has it hap­pened, it’s been hap­pen­ing for decades. We have cre­at­ed a nu­cle­us of crick­et­ing pow­er, of re­gion­al uni­ty, we’re hap­py to­geth­er, we’re frus­trat­ed to­geth­er, and we ex­ist peace­ful­ly.”