Gillian Cal­iste

Be­ing cu­ri­ous about is­sues that mat­ter and help­ing oth­ers are what make T&T-born De­ser­rie Forte-Perez tick. Even from her days as a UWI un­der­grad­u­ate, her friends re­ferred to her as a “join­er”, an avid par­tic­i­pant in al­most every ac­tiv­i­ty she en­coun­tered.

Forte-Perez is a sales man­ag­er, strate­gic mar­keter and the out­go­ing di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion am­bas­sador at Mi­a­mi-Fort Laud­erdale with LinkedIn Mar­ket­ing So­lu­tions, the ad­ver­tis­ing side of on­line plat­form LinkedIn owned by Mi­crosoft. LinkedIn is the world’s largest pro­fes­sion­al net­work, con­nect­ing po­ten­tial em­ploy­ers with po­ten­tial em­ploy­ees.

Based at LinkedIn for al­most five years as a strate­gic mar­keter with 18 years of ex­pe­ri­ence, Forte-Perez leads a team of six me­dia sales pro­fes­sion­als which of­fers ad­ver­tis­ing ser­vices for the brand’s biggest cus­tomers in tech­nol­o­gy and fi­nance. Pri­or to that, she was in­volved in strate­gic op­er­a­tions at Face­book and worked at fi­nan­cial ser­vices gi­ants Amer­i­can Ex­press, Citibank, and Mor­gan Stan­ley.

But it is her role as di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion am­bas­sador that she has been most pas­sion­ate about.

“One thing that has brought me the most joy is serv­ing from 2020 to 2022 as co-chair of our Black In­clu­sion Group (BIG) which is our vol­un­teer Em­ploy­ee Re­source Group (ERG). It was one of the bless­ings in my life, help­ing to bring our African di­as­po­ra to­geth­er and ed­u­cat­ing peo­ple about our cul­ture,” she said

A com­mon fea­ture of the Amer­i­can work­place, ERGs are affin­i­ty groups that bring to­geth­er and em­pow­er peo­ple with com­mon qual­i­ties, ex­pe­ri­ences, and goals. Ex­am­ples are African-Amer­i­can groups, His­pan­ic groups, Women’s groups, and Vet­er­an groups.

Forte-Perez land­ed the po­si­tion of di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion am­bas­sador in Ju­ly 2020 af­ter an in­ter­view. She has act­ed as the voice of black em­ploy­ees, in­clud­ing those orig­i­nat­ing from the Caribbean and var­i­ous parts of Africa, as well as oth­er un­der­rep­re­sent­ed mi­nori­ties, help­ing to ed­u­cate them about their rights and mo­ti­vat­ing them to take up their true place in the work en­vi­ron­ment. Her role en­tailed lob­by­ing for gen­der equal­i­ty for women in the work­place, in­clud­ing pro­mot­ing the ad­vance­ment of women to se­nior po­si­tions and en­cour­ag­ing younger un­der­rep­re­sent­ed em­ploy­ees to speak up more, net­work, de­vel­op their skills and ex­pe­ri­ence and build their pro­fes­sion­al brand.

Noth­ing could pre­pare Forte-Perez for the ef­fects of the mon­u­men­tal out­cry against sys­temic in­jus­tice and racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the af­ter­math of the mur­der of African-Amer­i­can George Floyd by a white po­lice of­fi­cer in Min­neso­ta when she took up her new role back in mid-2020–not even her pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence as pres­i­dent of the Black Em­ploy­ee Net­work at Amer­i­can Ex­press where she had worked for sev­en years af­ter busi­ness school.

“At that time black em­ploy­ees, brown em­ploy­ees, or even peo­ple who could re­late were fed up. They were frus­trat­ed, so one of the ef­forts was that we had to talk to our lead­er­ship to find out how they would ad­dress that. We ed­u­cat­ed our ex­ec­u­tive teams and oth­er ERGs on how they could be part of the so­lu­tion. We led with com­pas­sion as the voice of the com­mu­ni­ty to in­flu­ence change,” Forte-Perez re­count­ed.

Along with her co-chair Christo­pher Arce­neauz, Forte-Perez al­so cre­at­ed role of the “Ally­ship Lead” to ed­u­cate whites and the pub­lic at large about the every­day chal­lenges faced by mi­nori­ties and how to be em­pa­thet­ic.

Is­sues of mi­nori­ties ranged from mi­croag­gres­sions, such as mak­ing am­bigu­ous com­ments about es­pe­cial­ly eth­nic hair and at­tire to dis­crim­i­na­tion like in­ad­e­quate train­ing, in­ad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion and in­clu­sion in ma­jor roles in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, and how blacks re­ceived feed­back from boss­es com­pared to their white coun­ter­parts. The ini­tia­tive end­ed up in­spir­ing the best prac­tices of oth­er ERGs at LinkedIn and Forte-Perez has been cred­it­ed with tripling em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment, de­vel­op­ment, and re­ten­tion.

De­scrib­ing her­self as a com­mu­ni­ty and cus­tomer-ori­ent­ed per­son bent on al­ways giv­ing back, Forte-Perez re­called first join­ing di­ver­si­ty groups at the Amer­i­can Ex­press Com­pa­ny af­ter grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia’s Whar­ton School in 2009. At Amer­i­can Ex­press, she had be­gun to help re­cruit un­der­rep­re­sent­ed groups.

His­tor­i­cal­ly in Amer­i­ca, un­der­rep­re­sent­ed groups are those who have been sub­ject­ed to in­sti­tu­tion­al dis­crim­i­na­tion such as African Amer­i­cans, Asian Amer­i­cans, Lati­nos, and Na­tive Amer­i­cans. She ob­served that there were mi­nori­ties who gave back or vol­un­teered but were of­ten over­looked when it came to pro­mo­tion or sim­ply went un­recog­nised in the work­place, and she was de­ter­mined to find a means of show­cas­ing their tal­ents in an ef­fort to pay for­ward the awards and as­sis­tance from oth­ers she had re­ceived in the past. She end­ed up be­ing the pres­i­dent of the Black Em­ploy­ee Net­work for two years at the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The up­surge in tech com­pa­nies saw Forte-Perez switch from fi­nan­cial ser­vices to Face­book to reap the ben­e­fits of such growth. In 2018, she was re­cruit­ed by LinkedIn through her per­son­al LinkedIn pro­file.

Af­ter giv­ing birth to her son in 2019, she want­ed to re­sume her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the work­place ac­tiv­i­ties of the black com­mu­ni­ty and ap­plied for the di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion am­bas­sador post. Her warm per­son­al­i­ty helped to make her stand out and con­nect with peo­ple, in­clud­ing her Puer­to Ri­can-Amer­i­can hus­band Alex whom she had mar­ried in 2016.

A for­mer Mal­oney and St James res­i­dent, Forte-Perez is of mixed her­itage and with pre­dom­i­nant­ly African fea­tures, she iden­ti­fies as a “black woman”. Her moth­er, a Pe­nal na­tive, is of Venezue­lan and Carib an­ces­try while her fa­ther is of African her­itage. The last of her moth­er’s chil­dren, her old­er sib­lings’ fa­ther was East In­di­an.

But Forte-Perez’s cos­mopoli­tan back­ground did lit­tle to pre­pare her for the racial and eth­nic is­sues she would face in the Unit­ed States when she mi­grat­ed in 2004 at age 22.

The UWI Man­age­ment Stud­ies and Fi­nance grad­u­ate was able to se­cure a full schol­ar­ship to New York Uni­ver­si­ty (NYU) to do her mas­ter’s through a pro­gramme called The Con­sor­tium which awards full-tu­ition fel­low­ships to top MBA can­di­dates from un­der­reprep­re­sent­ed groups. Her first re­al taste of prej­u­dice quashed her en­thu­si­asm.

“I nev­er felt like a mi­nor­i­ty in Trinidad. We had race is­sues some­times but I nev­er felt like a mi­nor­i­ty. I re­mem­ber March 14, 2007. It was cold and I had just had ex­pe­ri­ences in cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, work­ing in Citibank, for ex­am­ple, when I had just re­ceived news of be­ing ad­mit­ted in­to NYU to pur­sue my MBA and I was telling my boss. She said how did you do that and was shocked that some­one who looked like me could be ac­cept­ed in­to NYU,” Forte-Perez said.

Forte-Perez be­gan to un­der­stand where she fit in the grand scheme of things abroad as even her ex­pand­ing group of friends in the US with whom she so­cialised be­came “di­verse, but still not very di­verse”.

De­spite a lack of funds, she earnest­ly want­ed to at­tain her MBA from the Whar­ton School, a pres­ti­gious in­sti­tu­tion that pro­motes di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion. She de­clined the of­fer to NYU and as part of an in­tern­ship at Mor­gan Stan­ley about three years lat­er, she re­ceived a fel­low­ship to pur­sue her mas­ter’s at her num­ber one choice. Forte-Perez cred­its her Whar­ton fel­low­ship to her Do­mini­can friend Sil­via Med­i­na who worked with her at Citibank and rec­om­mend­ed that she join Man­age­ment Lead­er­ship for To­mor­row (MLT), a non-prof­it that trains as­pir­ing mi­nor­i­ty MBA can­di­dates to get in­to busi­ness school.

The ad­ven­ture en­thu­si­ast and self-pro­claimed Car­ni­val lover was in­volved in Car­ni­val event pro­mo­tion for a few years through her com­pa­ny Soleil En­ter­tain­ment where she planned Car­ni­val trips and ex­pe­ri­ences to T&T for for­eign­ers and in­ter­na­tion­al friends. When she vis­its an­nu­al­ly to play mas with Bliss, Forte-Perez brings her skills as a mar­keter to en­ter­tain­ment ven­tures of her friends here in Trinidad.

Her hopes for the near fu­ture are to con­tin­ue to break stereo­types and be­come a Chief Ex­pe­ri­ence Of­fi­cer. She ad­vis­es young peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar to take ad­van­tage of rep­utable so­cial me­dia plat­forms through which they can ad­ver­tise their skills and net­work, and stressed the im­por­tance of aim­ing high and seek­ing out in­ter­na­tion­al schol­ar­ships, fel­low­ships, and op­por­tu­ni­ties even when one’s per­son­al funds may be un­able to cov­er ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion.

She added: “Keep learn­ing, be­cause you start­ed at a par­tic­u­lar place it does not mean that there is where you are go­ing to end up, set goals and write them down and know what you val­ue whether it is fam­i­ly, ed­u­ca­tion, sav­ing, or trav­el­ling the world so you can ad­e­quate­ly pri­ori­tise.”