FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

Rac­quel Moses is a phe­nom­e­nal woman not sole­ly pur­su­ing her own ad­vance­ment, but work­ing to­wards im­ple­ment­ing so­lu­tions for the fu­ture of our plan­et. In essence, she is work­ing tire­less­ly for all of us, and the gen­er­a­tions that come af­ter us.

Char­ac­ter­iz­ing her idea of suc­cess as “a star with many points, where all the points shine,” she em­braces her roles of CEO of Caribbean Cli­mate Smart Ac­cel­er­a­tor (CC­SA) and as moth­er to “two amaz­ing girls”. Moses is mul­ti­fac­eted and mul­ti­tal­ent­ed, and has wet her feet in var­i­ous ca­reers, giv­ing her­self a depth and breadth of pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ences, man­ag­ing and lead­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions, along with sit­ting on var­i­ous lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al boards.

Moses was born and raised in Barataria, at­tend­ed Bish­op Anstey High School and pur­sued Or­ga­ni­za­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy at the uni­ver­si­ty lev­el. Think­ing that she want­ed to be an at­tor­ney, she worked briefly at a law firm and was ul­ti­mate­ly hired by the com­pa­ny that sold tech­nol­o­gy to the firm. She then did her Mas­ters at the Geor­gia In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Man­age­ment of Tech­nol­o­gy and worked in var­i­ous or­ga­ni­za­tions, in­clud­ing In­vesTT, where she worked on green in­vest­ment so­lu­tions, and as the Mi­crosoft Coun­try Man­ag­er for T&T, where she en­gaged in projects lever­ag­ing pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships to­ward en­vi­ron­men­tal so­lu­tions. How­ev­er she dived head­first in­to the ocean of cli­mate change in 2018.

In 2018 Moses had her younger daugh­ter, an event to which she at­trib­ut­es her piv­ot in­to cli­mate change. Short­ly af­ter her daugh­ter’s birth, while Moses and her hus­band were con­sid­er­ing fi­nan­cial op­tions to se­cure funds for her fu­ture uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion, the Unit­ed Na­tions’ In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) re­leased a sober­ing re­port. The re­port stat­ed that if CO2 emis­sions did not drop around 45 per cen, keep­ing glob­al warm­ing to a max­i­mum of 1.5 de­grees cel­sius be­fore 2030, the dam­age would be ir­re­versible, and the risks of drought, floods, ex­treme heat and pover­ty for hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple would sky­rock­et.

These find­ings made Moses ques­tion why she was work­ing to save for some­thing in 18 years, when in 12 years the en­vi­ron­ment and by ex­ten­sion, the earth could be ob­so­lete. Spring­ing in­to ac­tion, Moses said “I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I didn’t work on this,” and be­gan in­volv­ing her­self in cli­mate ac­tion, as­sum­ing the po­si­tion of CEO of Caribbean Cli­mate Smart Ac­cel­er­a­tor as soon as Jan­u­ary 2019.

The CC­SA was found­ed from a com­mit­ment made in 2017 at Pres­i­dent Macron’s One Plan­et Sum­mit, along with the Prime Min­is­ters of Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Saint Lu­cia and Vir­gin Group Founder, Richard Bran­son. Cat­alyzed by the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects of Hur­ri­canes Maria and Ir­ma in 2017, lead­ers quick­ly mo­bi­lized to re­duce the im­pact of cli­mate change on lives and liveli­hoods.

This or­ga­ni­za­tion is led by the Caribbean, and fit for pur­pose for the Caribbean con­text. The CC­SA fo­cus­es on four pri­or­i­ty pil­lars, ac­cel­er­at­ing col­lec­tive so­lu­tions to­ward a Cli­mate Smart Zone, with the cen­tral aim of trans­form­ing the re­gion’s econ­o­my by “fast track­ing sound pub­lic and pri­vate in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties that sup­port cli­mate ac­tion and eco­nom­ic growth through sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.”

The CC­SA was con­cerned that ex­ist­ing cli­mate ac­tion failed to yield the re­sults that were ur­gent­ly need­ed. Al­though the Caribbean is one of the re­gions that con­tribute the least to glob­al CO2 emis­sions, Moses makes an im­por­tant dis­tinc­tion, that T&T’s emis­sion rates per capi­ta are in the top ten in the world. It is cru­cial in the cli­mate ac­tion dis­course for the re­gion to act mul­ti­lat­er­al­ly and lead by ex­am­ple, so our voic­es are am­pli­fied on the world stage and re­ceived with au­thor­i­ty.

Some of the work that Moses leads at the CC­SA in­clude lead­ing the charge for T&T to con­vert to re­new­able en­er­gy and work­ing with Na­tion­al En­er­gy to set up a so­lar en­er­gy plant. The CC­SA al­so fo­cus­es on food se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion, set­ting up in­door farm­ing pro­grammes, which will fos­ter en­tre­pre­neur­ship and cre­ate sus­tain­able path­ways for the fu­ture. The work she does is fo­cused not on­ly on cli­mate ac­tion, but al­so how cli­mate ac­tion can lead to eco­nom­ic growth, for ex­am­ple, job cre­ation and ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties. Tak­ing re­al ac­tion and im­ple­ment­ing huge so­lu­tions to his­toric en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues have im­pas­sioned Moses as she leads a small team at the CC­SA.

Moses, dur­ing her crossover from the tech space, ad­mit­ted to be­ing a lit­tle “in­tim­i­dat­ed” when she ini­tial­ly as­sumed the CEO po­si­tion. How­ev­er, she al­so ex­pressed that “my de­f­i­n­i­tion of brav­ery isn’t not be­ing afraid, it’s do­ing it any­way when you’re afraid.” To com­bat the feel­ings of in­tim­i­da­tion, Moses re­lied on the tools from her own tool box, re­call­ing how she was able to con­quer some of the tough­est chal­lenges in the past.

As a men­tor to young women, she en­cour­ages them to al­so em­ploy these tools “when you are faced with your most dif­fi­cult ob­sta­cles, know that you’ll ei­ther suc­ceed or learn a les­son and some new skills.” She be­lieves in the im­por­tance of tak­ing on big chal­lenges will­ing­ly, as “there aren’t any fail­ures, on­ly growth.”

One of Moses’ chal­lenges in­cludes the “work­ing par­ent guilt” that many pro­fes­sion­al women are sad­dled with. As one of her daugh­ters is in her 20s, her guilt at the mo­ment is more close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with her five year old.

“Any­time I need to trav­el, I feel heart­bro­ken when she needs me and I’m not there.”

On the oth­er hand, she al­so be­lieves that her daugh­ter be­comes even more brave and re­silient, tak­ing on chal­lenges for her­self when her moth­er isn’t at home. How­ev­er, Moses doesn’t do it all alone. She cred­its her daugh­ter’s fa­ther, call­ing him “a phe­nom­e­nal dad, who meets me halfway” and be­lieves that “to be a suc­cess­ful pro­fes­sion­al that doesn’t end up crazy, hav­ing a sup­port­ive part­ner is so im­por­tant.” In her words, time is a fi­nite re­source, and she spends this time wise­ly, pri­or­i­tiz­ing her daugh­ters, en­sur­ing to al­ways be present and en­gaged in all their mean­ing­ful mile­stones.

As one of our 23 Women to Watch, Rac­quel Moses has not on­ly seen ma­jor pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess thus far in her ca­reer, she’s unique­ly un­afraid to rein­vent her­self, piv­ot, and tack­le new chal­lenges head­first. Moses says that, even in light of her in­cred­i­ble achieve­ments, “my dad would joke that I’m ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly or­di­nary”. But “this or­di­nary per­son” sits on sev­er­al boards, is a UN Am­bas­sador and the CEO of a com­pa­ny, all while be­ing a lov­ing mom. She en­cour­ageswomen who feel “or­di­nary” to know that no mat­ter their cur­rent state or po­si­tion in life, they have some­thing mean­ing­ful and spe­cial to con­tribute.

Lead­ing the charge in the re­gion to­wards a live­able world for the next gen­er­a­tion, Moses is work­ing res­olute­ly to make a re­al dif­fer­ence for our coun­try and our Caribbean.

Fay­ola K J Fras­er is a pro­fes­sion­al in the in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment are­na. She has a BA in In­ter­na­tion­al (Mid­dle East­ern) Stud­ies and an MSc in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions & Diplo­ma­cy from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.