Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

Re­sel Melville had to put in years of hard work and long hours of stud­ies to es­tab­lish her­self as a pro­fes­sion­al. Hav­ing built her con­fi­dence and ex­per­tise, fac­ing ageism and oth­er forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion in the work­place nev­er left her paral­ysed. In­stead, Melville ho­n­oured her­self enough to leave cer­tain en­vi­ron­ments that were not fit for her.

Melville now works as the Pro­gramme Of­fi­cer for the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s (ILO), Re­gion­al Ini­tia­tive Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean Free of Child Labour, study­ing ways to pre­vent and elim­i­nate child labour in the Caribbean.

“I took to heart my grand­moth­er’s say­ing, ‘Long liv­ers live long, but trav­ellers see the most!’ and de­cid­ed I would be­come some sort of am­bas­sador or find a job that would let me trav­el, meet in­ter­est­ing peo­ple, and tell sto­ries,” Melville said.

Melville went to Gene­va to do her Mas­ter’s in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, spe­cial­is­ing in in­ter­na­tion­al his­to­ry and pol­i­tics. While study­ing, she be­came preg­nant, which forced her to fig­ure out how to take care of her child while con­strained by the con­di­tions of her work per­mit. “I was like, okay, I’m go­ing to school, my work per­mit in this coun­try on­ly al­lows me x amount of hours, what can I do? I can teach Eng­lish. Okay, great. Peo­ple like how my food tastes, I will bake sweet bread and pone and what­ev­er else and sell it to them,” Melville said.

Fast for­ward to where she is to­day, as­sert­ing her pres­ence in every­thing from board rooms to in­ter­na­tion­al fo­rums, the 44-year-old, born and raised in Rox­bor­ough, To­ba­go, learned to serve from an ear­ly age and fur­ther de­vel­oped a love for learn­ing. How­ev­er, along this path, hard­ships and chal­lenges knocked on her door.

One of the pre­vail­ing chal­lenges she has found while work­ing in the Caribbean has been ageism. Young adults, she said, in­clud­ing when she had been a young pro­fes­sion­al her­self, have had to con­stant­ly nav­i­gate the rigid hi­er­ar­chi­cal struc­tures that of­ten do not cham­pi­on growth.

“A lot of young peo­ple come out with their qual­i­fi­ca­tions, great ideas, and en­er­gy to be able to step in­to po­si­tions not just of fel­low­ship but of lead­er­ship. It was a bat­tle to be heard and tak­en se­ri­ous­ly as a young per­son seek­ing to make your way in­to the world,” Melville said.

Her age was not the on­ly fac­tor that played a role in her dif­fi­cul­ties; her gen­der and eth­nic­i­ty al­so in­formed how old­er men per­ceived her.

“As young black women, you had to hit the ceil­ing as if they want­ed you to be the work­er bees. They want­ed us to do what we did ex­cel­lent­ly, but every time you looked up, you saw the old men oc­cu­py­ing all the po­si­tions of se­nior man­age­ment or se­nior lead­er­ship. And it still hasn’t changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly,” Melville said.

The psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact of those ex­pe­ri­ences, ac­cord­ing to Melville, caused a lot of sec­ond-guess­ing of her abil­i­ties and a lot of giv­ing in­to the false no­tion that she was not good enough for cer­tain po­si­tions.

Melville pushed her­self to cre­ate a new path, even go­ing as far as sud­den­ly quit­ting a well-pay­ing job that was prov­ing to be un­con­ducive to her fu­ture. There was no job wait­ing for her.

“I told them when I was leav­ing that I have to go to grow. I had to jump off that ship and be will­ing to swim in the deep wa­ters un­til I got to the land that I knew that I was promised,” Melville said.

Melville quit her work be­cause she was tired of be­ing “pi­geon­holed in­to a spe­cif­ic po­si­tion,” which pre­vent­ed her from build­ing the life she want­ed.

“They didn’t see me grow­ing past that po­si­tion, de­spite how much work I did and the re­sults I was get­ting. The or­gan­i­sa­tion it­self was not ready to make space for my growth and didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly wel­come some of the ques­tions or sug­ges­tions that I made,” Melville con­fessed. “I jumped off the cliff and then built the plane on the way down, okay?”

For young adults who are caught in work cul­tures un­sup­port­ive of their pro­fes­sion­al growth, Melville strong­ly ad­vis­es that they go for­ward with faith and “jump ship.”

“Oh, yes! Don’t build a house where you were on­ly meant to pitch a tent. You must be will­ing some­times to up­root every­thing and go. Faith is step­ping out on noth­ing and know­ing you’ll land on some­thing,” Melville said.

It took Melville sev­en months to find a new job. For three of those sev­en months, in­stead of job-hunt­ing, she took the time to care­ful­ly de­ter­mine where she want­ed to go next with pur­pose and what else could chal­lenge her.

She baked muffins and cook­ies, test­ed her present skillsets, and worked for a short time as a con­sul­tant for Hazel Man­ning. “Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, I did a bit of con­sult­ing with Mrs Man­ning; she has a firm called the Lead­er­ship Firm. And I lever­aged so­cial con­nec­tions and re­la­tion­ships. I was re­ferred to work with her on a par­tic­u­lar project, and that opened doors for me to re­con­nect with pro­fes­sion­als,” Melville said.

Re­flect­ing on her time­line of work that has tak­en her over­seas and back, Melville paid homage to her up­bring­ing in the coun­try­side of To­ba­go, where the ego is told to take a seat in the back.

“If you’re too proud to do what needs to be done, you end up falling way be­hind. So, I un­der­stood the val­ue of hard work, re­gard­less of what that type of work was,” Melville said.

Re­sel Melville has two sons, Camiel Melville, 20, who is study­ing game de­sign and an­i­ma­tion in Ger­many, and Ethan Melville, 12, who just fin­ished SEA.