Less than a year af­ter re­tir­ing as group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of First Cit­i­zens Group, Karen Dar­basie is set to join the board of di­rec­tors of Agos­ti­ni Ltd from June 1.

Dar­basie will re­place Dr Wavne Fred­er­ick, who will step down as a di­rec­tor on that date.
In a no­tice pub­lished un­der the Se­cu­ri­ties Act, Agos­ti­ni said Fred­er­ick’s de­par­ture was linked to in­creased com­mit­ments in the Unit­ed States.

The com­pa­ny thanked Fred­er­ick for his ser­vice, de­scrib­ing his con­tri­bu­tions and judg­ment dur­ing his tenure as “mean­ing­ful and high­ly val­ued.”
Dar­basie served as group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at First Cit­i­zens from April 2015 un­til her re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2025.

Agos­ti­ni de­scribed her as a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive with more than 30 years’ ex­pe­ri­ence in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tors.
Be­fore join­ing First Cit­i­zens, she held sev­er­al se­nior roles at Citibank Trinidad and To­ba­go.

She has al­so served on sev­er­al cor­po­rate and non-prof­it boards, in­clud­ing the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T, the En­er­gy Cham­ber, Unit­ed Way T&T, and Trinidad Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny Ltd, where she served as chair.

Dar­basie holds a first-class ho­n­ours de­gree in elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, an MBA with dis­tinc­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick, and an MSc with dis­tinc­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Es­sex.

In 2024, Dar­basie re­ceived the Cha­co­nia Gold Medal for Bank­ing and Fi­nance in recog­ni­tion of her con­tri­bu­tions to the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.