Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

Daren Lee Sing is on a quest to take T&T’s ser­vices sec­tor to the next lev­el and to fur­ther ce­ment this coun­try in the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al are­na.

“I have al­ways looked at a life from an en­tre­pre­neur’s life and from a me­dia lens and so this op­por­tu­ni­ty al­lows me to look at self-de­vel­op­ment, self-ac­tu­al­i­sa­tion and see how I can take the tools learned over the years and trans­form them and tran­scribe them,” Lee Sing ex­plained to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian as he spoke about his new role as act­ing CEO of the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vice In­dus­tries (TTC­SI).

He is act­ing un­til the va­can­cy is filled in the next cou­ple months.

Lee Sing re­places Vashti Guyadeen, who is now the CEO of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.

He in­tends to fur­ther strength­en the TTC­SI’s gov­er­nance and strate­gic plan­ning to po­si­tion it as a re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al leader.

He fur­ther ex­plained his pri­or­i­ties in­clude sup­port­ing SMEs with de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes, im­prov­ing busi­ness prac­tices and ad­vanc­ing on­go­ing projects. He said em­pha­sis will al­so be on re­al-time ad­vo­ca­cy, net­work­ing, and fos­ter­ing part­ner­ships as he al­so aims to en­hance re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion to sup­port Caribbean economies and boost glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Lee Sing, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA), has al­ready mapped out his first or­der of busi­ness.

In the com­ing days, he will be in­volved in sev­er­al cour­tesy vis­its to mem­bers and stake­hold­ers with the aim of hear­ing first-hand from them. He will then used the in­sights gained to chart a re­al­is­tic and time­ly ac­tion plan for the all-round de­vel­op­ment of the ser­vices sec­tor.

“You re­al­ly can’t sit in an of­fice. So the first job is to get out there, roll up your sleeves, and vis­it every sin­gle mem­ber, lis­ten to their needs. I’ve al­ready be­gun do­ing it, and it is go­ing to be an on­go­ing ex­er­cise go­ing for­ward.

“So the ex­er­cise of be­ing the CEO is an ex­er­cise in tem­pera­ment and con­trol and go­ing mem­ber by mem­ber and ul­ti­mate­ly fig­ur­ing out what they need and how to as­sist them in get­ting their own unique strate­gic plans to be­come ex­port ready,” he added.

On what the feed­back from TTC­SI mem­bers has been thus far, Lee Sing said some are stronger than oth­ers, but for the most part, many are con­sumed by un­der­stand­ing how to gen­er­ate rev­enues, how to take their ser­vice and ren­der it for­ward and how to utilise so­cial me­dia.

The TTC­SI rep­re­sents 700,000 mem­bers com­ing from fash­ion, ma­rine, cre­ative, cred­it unions, tourism, in­no­va­tion, mid­wives, HR pro­fes­sion­als among oth­ers and Lee Sing main­tained that fo­cus will be on mem­ber-de­vel­op­ment, ad­vo­ca­cy for ap­pro­pri­ate leg­is­la­tion for the re­spec­tive as­so­ci­a­tions and their in­clu­sion in na­tion­al de­ci­sion-mak­ing as far as is prac­ti­cal.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that the cre­ative in­dus­try is a key part of the ser­vices sec­tor, Lee Sing al­so wants to do more in this area.

“I know there’s a Bol­ly­wood and there’s a Nol­ly­wood and there’s a Hol­ly­wood, but there’s noth­ing Caribbean-cen­tric or even Trinida­di­an-cen­tric,” he said

Lee Sing who took up the po­si­tion about a month ago, said he was not sur­prised when he got the call to join the TTC­SI.

He is no stranger to TTC­SI, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly served the or­gan­i­sa­tion in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties in­clud­ing di­rec­tor, sec­re­tary, trea­sur­er and vice-pres­i­dent. This fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the en­ti­ty’s op­er­a­tions and ob­jec­tives, he said, is ex­pect­ed to fa­cil­i­tate a smooth tran­si­tion and en­able him to hit the ground run­ning in his new role.

He will al­so fo­cus on the pro­mo­tions of the ac­tiv­i­ties of the sec­tor via it ser­vices week, due to take place from No­vem­ber 17 to 22 and the ear­ly re­turn of TTC­SI’s na­tion­al awards cer­e­mo­ny to recog­nise ser­vice sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions for ex­cel­lence.

As the TTC­SI nav­i­gates the fu­ture, Lee Sing said he would con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate close­ly with the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, lever­ag­ing the ex­per­tise of the team at the TTC­SI sec­re­tari­at and the di­verse skills of the board of di­rec­tors.

The 45 year-old, who brings over 15 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in lead­er­ship and man­age­ment, is adamant that a stronger ser­vices sec­tor can strength­en the lo­cal econ­o­my.

“Ser­vices, as I see it in a post-pan­dem­ic world, can be one of the ma­jor dri­vers for eco­nom­ic growth. One way in which we can ex­er­cise that is via trade mis­sions. The TTC­SI has built out strong re­la­tions with the Caribbean, ar­eas of Africa, ar­eas of the US. We’ve touched the world in a mean­ing­ful way and so, if we take these trade mis­sions, whether vir­tu­al, as we’ve been do­ing, or in-per­son, that is a fo­cal point that al­lows us to bet­ter un­der­stand what oth­ers can pro­vide, but more im­por­tant­ly, al­lows us to know what we can ex­port to them.

“And so, look­ing at it from a ser­vices per­spec­tive, the sky’s the lim­it. An ac­coun­tant can take up a job in Trinidad from any­where in the world. The cred­it union can show how ro­bust Trinidad’s mod­el is. That’s what makes this pe­ri­od, and what we do, even bet­ter be­cause we can fa­cil­i­tate and sup­port and pro­pel al­most any ser­vice,” Lee Sing said adding, this can al­so help in the eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and help T&T move away from its de­pen­dence on oil and gas.

“Trinidad oil and gas as a re­source could ul­ti­mate­ly run out one day and the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise need­ed some sort of sup­port,” Lee Sing em­pha­sised.