On Jan­u­ary 1, 2023, Natasha Davis was named the chief op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer (COO) of the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T.

Be­fore as­cend­ing to that role, Davis served as the UTC’s vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing and op­er­a­tions.

Davis’ rise is a suc­cess sto­ry on many lev­els, as she grew up in a com­mu­ni­ty of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with neg­a­tive press, but she is proud to be one of sev­er­al pro­fes­sion­als who are work­ing to change the stig­ma at­tached to the area.

“I grew up in Des­per­lie Cres­cent, Laven­tille Road, East Dry Riv­er,” said Davis.

“Al­beit a stressed com­mu­ni­ty, with all the is­sues of crime and lim­it­ed re­sources, there is a strong group of pro­fes­sion­als, doc­tors, teach­ers, en­gi­neers, nurs­es, and in­dus­try lead­ers that came out of this com­mu­ni­ty that are sup­port­ing the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment.”

Davis ex­plained that her fam­i­ly of six man­aged to make the best of their lives, as she and her sib­lings made the best of “a tiny two-and-a-half-bed­room down­stairs apart­ment.”

Davis, the el­dest of her par­ent’s chil­dren, was sim­i­lar­ly proud that all of her fam­i­ly had made strides in their pro­fes­sions.

“My dad, Hen­ry Davis, was an elec­tri­cal fore­man at the Min­istry of Works, and my mom, Joyce­lyn Chap­man Davis, was a geri­atric nurse. My par­ents, now mar­ried for 47 years, have four kids, three girls and one boy. I am the first. My sis­ters are Na­tal­ie, Davis-Branche, a spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion teacher at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and Na­toya Davis-Prud­homme, a court re­porter at the Ju­di­cia­ry of T&T. My broth­er, Nixon Davis, is a pro­gram man­ag­er at Vertiv Cor­po­ra­tion in the US,” she said.

“Not bad for kids from the Hill,” Davis told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Davis went to pri­ma­ry school at East­ern Girls’, a Gov­ern­ment School on George Street, Port-of-Spain.

There, she be­came a well-round­ed stu­dent, tak­ing part in nu­mer­ous ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties.

“I was an ac­tive school choir mem­ber (and even in my church choir). I per­formed at The Na­tion­al Mu­sic Fes­ti­val on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions. But I have nev­er done a so­lo, so I can’t pride my choir mem­ber­ships on my singing abil­i­ty. I was al­so a mem­ber of Brown­ies and the Red Cross Groups,” Davis said.

Davis went on to Suc­cess Laven­tille Com­pos­ite School in Suc­cess Vil­lage, Laven­tille where she be­came the fe­male head pre­fect and a mem­ber of the school’s crick­et team.

But af­ter fin­ish­ing CXC, she con­tin­ued to push for aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess, which lead her to meet an­oth­er in­spi­ra­tional lo­cal woman.

“I com­plet­ed A’Lev­els at Sixth Form Gov­ern­ment (Poly­tech­nic In­sti­tute), with a fo­cus on the sci­ences, Physics, Chem­istry and Bi­ol­o­gy. De­stra Gar­cia was in my year; she sang at every as­sem­bly and school func­tion. I am amazed at the pow­er­house of an en­tre­pre­neur and en­ter­tain­er she has be­come,” said Davis.

Davis then pur­sued ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, ini­tial­ly tar­get­ing a de­gree in sci­ences. How­ev­er, un­cer­tain­ty con­cern­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of em­ploy­ment in her field saw her make a change which would de­fine her ca­reer path sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

“In 1996, I en­rolled at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, in the Nat­ur­al Sci­ences de­part­ment, de­ter­mined to pur­sue a ca­reer in an­a­lyt­i­cal chem­istry and lat­er foren­sics. But, at that time, the sci­ence grad­u­ates com­plained about the lack of work op­por­tu­ni­ties, and I had signed a con­tract at the bank that gave me ex­act­ly one year af­ter grad­u­at­ing to find a job and start pay­ing my stu­dent loan. Yikes! So, I switched to the So­cial Sci­ence Fac­ul­ty to study Fi­nance and Mar­ket­ing. Those grad­u­ates looked hap­pi­er when they vis­it­ed the cam­pus in their fan­cy suits,” she said.

“I cried every day for three weeks straight be­cause I knew noth­ing about ac­counts, eco­nom­ics, or mar­ket­ing, but I was de­ter­mined not to fail.”

Her per­se­ver­ance would see her push on and ex­cel.

“Lat­er I would earn an MBA in In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­ket­ing from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness, and a BSc in Man­age­ment Stud­ies, spe­cial­is­ing in Mar­ket­ing and Fi­nance, from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.”

Through­out her jour­ney, Davis had key fig­ures in her life push­ing her to pur­sue spe­cif­ic fields, but even­tu­al­ly, her call­ing came to her.

“One of my grand­moth­ers used to clean lawyers’ of­fi­cers, so she want­ed me to be a lawyer. My dad, as an elec­tri­cian, had en­gi­neers as his boss­es, so he want­ed me to be­come an en­gi­neer. My favourite un­cle was a teacher and trav­elled the world, so I equat­ed trav­el­ling the world to a ca­reer in teach­ing. I start­ed teach­ing Math­e­mat­ics and Bi­ol­o­gy to Forms 1, 2 and 5 at an all-girls col­lege. But it wasn’t my call­ing.”

Davis’ as­cen­sion to COO at UTC fol­lows 20 years of lead­er­ship in the cor­po­rate world where she fo­cused on tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven growth, strate­gic mar­ket­ing, rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment, dig­i­tal strat­e­gy, em­ploy­ee em­pow­er­ment, trust ser­vices op­er­a­tions and ex­cep­tion­al cus­tomer ser­vice.

De­spite her suc­cess in that realm, there are still dreams that Davis wish­es to achieve in the fu­ture.

“I’ll like to be an artist and host an ex­hi­bi­tion,” she said.

Davis said she was grate­ful In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day has al­lowed women to cel­e­brate and con­tin­ue to mo­ti­vate oth­ers to­ward suc­cess.

“It’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty for me to pay homage to the ex­cep­tion­al women in my life, as well as to the count­less pow­er­ful women who have made sac­ri­fices and im­por­tant con­tri­bu­tions to ad­vance women’s rights, im­prove the qual­i­ty of life, and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for women lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly, and glob­al­ly.”

She said it was im­por­tant to have fig­ures in her life who pro­vid­ed cru­cial guid­ance through­out her life, but felt that women do need more fe­male role mod­els to nav­i­gate their fields.

“I was lucky to have el­ders, teach­ers, friends, and men­tors who guid­ed me through­out life. But to nav­i­gate the in­tri­ca­cies of the cor­po­rate world, I would have liked to have ac­cess to more fe­male men­tors se­nior to me.”

As she looked back on her life, she had this ad­vice for her younger self.

“Two points I need you to re­al­ly un­der­stand and live, young Tash

1. You have Di­vine sup­port, so don’t wor­ry so much and

2. Al­ways trust your in­tu­ition. It will help you nav­i­gate every sit­u­a­tion.”

In her cur­rent role as COO, Davis is tasked with lead­ing the con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment of UTC’s op­er­a­tions di­vi­sion to dri­ve ef­fi­cien­cy and in­no­va­tion across the or­gan­i­sa­tion while main­tain­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty and re­spon­sive­ness to cus­tomers’ re­quests.

She al­so has ex­ec­u­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for hu­man re­sources, cor­po­rate se­cu­ri­ty, fa­cil­i­ties man­age­ment, cor­po­rate ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­vest­ment cen­tre op­er­a­tions, process in­tel­li­gence and ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly for in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy (ICT).

While these tasks seem nu­mer­ous, Davis stressed that it was im­por­tant to main­tain a bal­anced lifestyle in the cor­po­rate world.

“I’m a BIG pro­mot­er of work-life bal­ance to my teams and col­leagues. But it’s not a fixed state. I in­ten­tion­al­ly work at it. I block days and times in my week­ly cal­en­dar to ex­er­cise. I have no-screen breaks. I read and feed my mind dai­ly. I love con­nect­ing to my tribe and na­ture, and the list goes on. I am not su­per­woman.”

Out­side of her pro­fes­sion­al com­mit­ments, some of her per­son­al re­cov­ery prac­tices range from trav­el­ling, pi­lates, and pho­tog­ra­phy to work­ing with char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions across the coun­try.