It's easy to re­mem­ber the night Wendy Fitzwilliam vied for the Miss Uni­verse 1998 ti­tle in Hon­olu­lu, Hawaii. Poised, bril­liant, re­splen­dent eyes that ra­di­at­ed a girl­ish charm and hu­mour, topped off with a sul­try jazz voice that cap­tured hearts...she was noth­ing short of gor­geous! Her hair in an el­e­gant up­do, adorned with two hi­bis­cus flow­ers–a nod to the host state, Hawaii, the Caribbean and her home­land, Trinidad and To­ba­go–un­doubt­ed­ly, she had out­shone the oth­ers.

Like the en­dear­ing flow­ers that helped set her apart that night, Fitzwilliam has blos­somed, among oth­er things, as an in­ter­na­tion­al am­bas­sador, hu­man rights ad­vo­cate, Caribbean Next Top Mod­el host and ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er, Car­ni­val afi­ciona­do, and as a dot­ing moth­er of a teen. Like many oth­er women, she has been test­ed by the fires of wom­an­hood, emerg­ing vic­to­ri­ous­ly as an ex­am­ple to, es­pe­cial­ly, oth­er women and girls.

Strik­ing­ly tall, beau­ti­ful, with en­vi­able enun­ci­a­tion and an un­mis­tak­able youth­ful, in­fec­tious laugh, she re­mains our Wendy, our gem.

On Oc­to­ber 4, Fitzwilliam turned 49. One year be­fore her 50th mile­stone birth­day, Sun­day Guardian cel­e­brates her vi­brance, pas­sion for life and suc­cess as a Caribbean Queen. She weighs in on the top­i­cal is­sue of whether a larg­er num­ber of women than men are en­rolling in ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion and pre­fer uni­ver­si­ty-ed­u­cat­ed mates, shares lessons from the pan­dem­ic and on let­ting go as a moth­er as her son, Ailan, em­barks on a new jour­ney at board­ing school.

Q&A with Fitzwilliam

In a CNN in­ter­view on Sep­tem­ber 26, New York Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor, Scott Gal­loway, stat­ed that low num­bers of males seek­ing a col­lege ed­u­ca­tion in the US were con­cern­ing, could lead to “broke and lone” males which is dan­ger­ous for so­ci­ety, and al­so a “mat­ing cri­sis” as “ed­u­cat­ed” women gen­er­al­ly pre­fer col­lege-ed­u­cat­ed men. Women made up 59.5 per cent of col­lege stu­dents at the end of the 2020-21 school year, com­pared to 40.5 per cent of men en­rolled in col­lege (US De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion). Oth­ers be­fore Gal­loway have al­so ex­pressed such con­cerns and in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we have seen sim­i­lar trends. (Ac­cord­ing to the World Bank col­lec­tion of de­vel­op­ment in­di­ca­tors as of Oc­to­ber 2021, in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the per­cent­age of stu­dents in­volved in ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion who are fe­male was 55.43 per cent in 2004.)

Wendy Fitzwilliam celebrated her birthday this month.

Courtesy Wendy Fitzwilliam

Have you no­ticed such a trend, and do you feel that lo­cal­ly, “ed­u­cat­ed” women gen­er­al­ly opt for col­lege-ed­u­cat­ed men? If so, why?

This trend has been hap­pen­ing in T&T and the Caribbean for sev­er­al years, since my time at UWI in the '90s. In most fac­ul­ties, women out­num­bered men sig­nif­i­cant­ly. At that time, I felt that our women were work­ing hard­er aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and were more de­ter­mined to take ad­van­tage of the pro­fes­sion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties that a uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion pro­vid­ed; that is, a guar­an­teed qual­i­ty job with­in a cer­tain in­come brack­et.

With the ad­vent of tech­nol­o­gy’s rapid growth and dis­rup­tive changes to all in­dus­tries glob­al­ly and the cre­ation of lu­cra­tive ca­reers as a re­sult that do not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­quire a tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion, but spe­cialised or tech­ni­cal train­ing, young men–by na­ture more open to tak­ing risks than women–have start­ed to tran­si­tion to these new ar­eas much faster than our women in many in­stances.

While a uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion speaks to a cer­tain de­ter­mi­na­tion and de­sire to de­vel­op and main­tain a high qual­i­ty of life, it is no guar­an­tee of suc­cess any­more. Our young women recog­nise this and while my gen­er­a­tion was the gen­er­a­tion of abun­dant choic­es, the young pro­fes­sion­als now are much more adept at cut­ting through the noise and find­ing the pro­fes­sions that earn them a de­cent liv­ing and pro­vide ful­fil­ment be­yond fi­nan­cial re­ward.

As we start think­ing about start­ing a fam­i­ly around the ages of 28-32, women do look for a cer­tain lev­el of “se­cu­ri­ty” in a part­ner and a uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion is a big part of that se­cu­ri­ty. How­ev­er, the am­bi­tion of the po­ten­tial mate and the way he treats me trump that de­gree any time of the day or night.

We have had sta­tis­tics from then ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia in 2019 of an alarm­ing school drop-out rate, in par­tic­u­lar, among males. What can T&T do to en­sure that males cap­i­talise on ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties and rem­e­dy their at­ti­tudes to­wards high­er ed­u­ca­tion and ed­u­ca­tion in gen­er­al?

We must cre­ate qual­i­ty jobs and sup­port the growth of lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs. Our ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem has out­paced the growth of new in­dus­tries with huge glob­al po­ten­tial like oil, gas and man­u­fac­tur­ing once had. The tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise pro­vid­ed through our en­er­gy and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors and our out­sized cre­ative tal­ents as a peo­ple should be com­bined at the pol­i­cy and fund­ing lev­el to cre­ate and sup­port the growth of non-tra­di­tion­al sec­tors in T&T, such as an­i­ma­tion, our fash­ion sec­tor, our Car­ni­val arts, the agri-pro­cess­ing sec­tor, re­new­able en­er­gy etc.

We can’t do all of these well at the same time. We have done the stud­ies ad nau­se­um to de­ter­mine what di­rec­tion our so­ci­ety should move in eco­nom­i­cal­ly. Our ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem is catch­ing up to the rest of the world, but we are not cre­at­ing the en­vi­ron­ment for our lo­cal­ly grown com­pa­nies to thrive and ex­cel fast enough to con­tin­ue to grow in the new econ­o­my. It re­quires cal­cu­lat­ed risk to do this and cul­tur­al­ly, we do not have much ap­petite for risk.

Our youth are not mo­ti­vat­ed to seek high­er ed­u­ca­tion be­cause they may train in a spe­cial­i­ty and, if lucky, end up in a job–as op­posed to a pro­fes­sion–that has lit­tle to do with their train­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, they can al­so ac­quire more ma­te­r­i­al wealth through crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty with min­i­mal con­se­quences–or rates of de­tec­tion and con­vic­tion are shame­ful–when com­pared to the hard work that goes in­to high­er ed­u­ca­tion to scrape by fi­nan­cial­ly. The fail­ure rate to qual­i­fy as a teacher or an ac­coun­tant is high­er than crim­i­nal suc­cess. So, we must make the pro­fes­sion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties more at­trac­tive post-de­gree to en­tice our youth, par­tic­u­lar­ly our men, back to school. Hon­est­ly, this ques­tion should be a whole se­ries in the news­pa­per! I’ve just got­ten start­ed.

Wendy Fitzwilliam and her son, Ailan.

Courtesy Wendy Fitzwilliam

Any­thing that you would like to share about Ailan go­ing off to board­ing school in prepa­ra­tion for col­lege...per­haps why you de­cid­ed to send him, how you're cop­ing? Ad­di­tion­al­ly, why are you look­ing for­ward to giv­ing him a uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to our theme?

Ailan has trav­elled ex­ten­sive­ly with me for his en­tire life. His first trip was at two months old to Miss Uni­verse 2006 in Los An­ge­les and by the time he wrote SEA, he had vis­it­ed Africa with me twice (Tan­za­nia, Ugan­da, Kenya and Ethiopia). Thus, he has al­ways seen T&T as an ex­cel­lent base, but he tru­ly be­lieves the world is his home…all of it.

His love of foot­ball, the US and Yale Uni­ver­si­ty; and his wicked ne­go­ti­a­tion skills made the de­ci­sion to send him to board­ing school to com­plete his high school ed­u­ca­tion a fore­gone con­clu­sion for his fa­ther and me. Like I said, gen­er­al­ly, boys are more open to risk and new ad­ven­tures. We girls test with our toes be­fore get­ting in. Boys go in head first once ex­cit­ed about an op­por­tu­ni­ty or an ex­pe­ri­ence. He is hap­py liv­ing his new ex­pe­ri­ence at his new school, there­fore I am too. Yes, I miss him ter­ri­bly, but I do not long to have him with me. There have been no tears, just lots of Face­Time video calls for both of us.

When he dis­cov­ered the voice-memo app on my phone as a tod­dler he used it abun­dant­ly! He record­ed him­self singing, our con­ver­sa­tions, his con­ver­sa­tions with his nan­ny…every­thing. I kept them all. Those voice notes now lit­ter all my playlists (a list of video or au­dio files that can be played back on a cell phone or com­put­er etc). So, whether work­ing at my com­put­er or lis­ten­ing to mu­sic in my car or hav­ing din­ner, his voice is with me. His joy and sense of hu­mour are with me, his “I love you Mum­my” is with me…in his voice. The voice notes al­ways give me a pleas­ant pause. They bring a smile to my face and a lit­tle prayer in my thoughts for him, then I move on with my day.

Wendy Fitzwilliam and Ailan enjoy exploring other countries together.

Courtesy Wendy Fitzwilliam

Hap­py to hear that. We've heard some of it be­fore, but still, I must ask, what were your dreams when you were younger? Do you think you have ful­filled/sur­passed them?

I have had and con­tin­ue to have too many dreams to men­tion here. I have achieved some of them, not ex­act­ly as I en­vi­sioned in my teens or 20s; some big­ger and bet­ter than my dreams, oth­ers dif­fer­ent to my vi­sion, but ful­fill­ing all the same and I’m still work­ing on a host of oth­ers.

I nev­er stop evolv­ing, learn­ing, dream­ing…and work­ing! How­ev­er, I do not put pres­sure on my­self ei­ther to do every­thing all at once. Per­haps I am spoiled be­cause the women in my fam­i­ly live very long, ful­fill­ing lives in good health. Both my grannies made it well past their 80th birth­days and Thin Granny (Mum’s mum) had a ball trav­el­ling the Caribbean well in­to her 90s with her ride or die, my grandaunt, Nao­mi. Aun­ty Nao­mi is now 103 and as sharp and fun as she was in her 50s–when I would have met her as a new­born. I’m still go­ing for a while yet hope­ful­ly, fab­u­lous­ly and with the joy…nec­es­sary to over­come the hur­dles that come with liv­ing life.

We are still in the throes of a pan­dem­ic that has caused many of us to ex­am­ine and even re­shape our lives. How has this world health cri­sis changed you and what dri­ves you, es­pe­cial­ly now, to keep push­ing for­ward?

Stuff…things mat­ter so much less now. Pre-pan­dem­ic, I was about the qual­i­ty of my ex­pe­ri­ences and friend­ships but now, I’m all in for my friend­ships and ex­pe­ri­ences and it doesn’t have to be a beach in the Mal­dives. Buy­ing dou­bles and the ex­change I have with Har­ry–my green­gro­cer–mean so much more now. I am al­so much more ex­pres­sive of my grat­i­tude for my fam­i­ly, friend­ships, and every­day ex­pe­ri­ences. Win­ning keeps me get­ting up and get­ting dressed up, work­ing out and learn­ing new things. This crazy time will not beat me, and I am de­ter­mined to come out of it emo­tion­al­ly, phys­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly health­i­er.

Beau­ti­ful. You men­tioned in a re­cent in­ter­view that you hope to write an­oth­er book. Please talk a lit­tle about this and about what­ev­er hopes you have for the fu­ture.

I am al­ways writ­ing, but Ailan kept me so busy that I did not have the time to struc­ture my thoughts and get down to writ­ing a book. I’m de­ter­mined to do so now that I have lots more time on evenings and it is a great way to stay off so­cial me­dia and YouTube, and be pro­duc­tive.