The Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion re­cent­ly wrapped up its 23rd year of host­ing its in­tern­ship pro­gramme for young lead­ers be­tween the ages of 18 and 25 years with a spe­cial clos­ing event that test­ed the young­sters’ cre­ative abil­i­ty and busi­ness in­sight in the form of an in­no­va­tion com­pe­ti­tion.

The sus­pense was bro­ken when 22-year-old UWI Mona grad­u­ate stu­dent, Syd­ney St Clair Dou­glas, emerged the win­ner at this, the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion’s in­au­gur­al In­tern­ship Com­pe­ti­tion, held on Oc­to­ber 8th at UTC’s Head Of­fice on In­de­pen­dence Square. For her in­ge­nu­ity, she was award­ed a six-month con­tract and $2,000 in Gift of Units.

Known as “In­ter­novate”—a play­ful com­bi­na­tion of in­tern­ship and in­no­va­tion—the com­pe­ti­tion saw the UTC in­terns go­ing through a rig­or­ous two-week process of sub­mit­ting ideas span­ning a youth pod­cast, en­hanc­ing UTC’s dig­i­tal en­gage­ment among mil­len­ni­als and boost­ing cus­tomer ser­vice chan­nels.

With six cre­ative ideas pre­sent­ed by Ali­cia Humphrey, Jeriel Leza­ma, Tami­ka Cha­con, Toni Bou­caud, Troy Roberts and Syd­ney St. Clair Dou­glas, it came down to four in­terns for the Fi­nals.

In the end, Syd­ney wowed the judges.  As part of the win­ning prize, she will work with a cross-func­tion­al team for six months to ex­e­cute a youth en­tre­pre­neur­ial pod­cast de­signed to en­gage this group.

INNOVATION CHAMPION: UTC’s Internovate Winner Sydney St Clair Douglas (center), gives a “thumbs up” as she poses in this photo with UTC’s Executive Director, Nigel Edwards and VP Marketing and Operations, Natasha Davis at UTC’s Head Office, Port-of-Spain. (Image courtesy UTC)

The pan­el of judges in­clud­ed: UTC Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Nigel Ed­wards, Vice Pres­i­dent Mar­ket­ing and Op­er­a­tions Natasha Davis, Chief In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer Nicholas Nan­ton, Chief Risk Of­fi­cer Crys­tal Ro­driguez-Greaves, As­sis­tant Vice Pres­i­dent, Ad­vi­so­ry Ser­vices, Lin­da Mano and Dig­i­tal Strat­e­gy Man­ag­er Ak­il Ed­wards.

“The in­terns were a source of in­spi­ra­tion for us, and this com­pe­ti­tion al­lowed us to see the UTC from the minds of our young lead­ers,” said Ed­wards, at the in­terns’ vir­tu­al grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, adding that the next phase is im­ple­men­ta­tion of the win­ning idea.

He said UTC en­cour­ages in­no­va­tion across the or­gan­i­sa­tion, with many ideas be­ing im­ple­ment­ed with great suc­cess but tap­ping in­to the in­terns’ en­er­gy and pas­sion was some­thing spe­cial.

Ed­wards in­spired the in­terns to­wards in­di­vid­ual suc­cess.

“I hope that your time spent with us was a jour­ney of per­son­al dis­cov­ery and per­son­al growth,” he en­cour­aged them.

The gen­e­sis for the com­pe­ti­tion be­gan when an in­tern re­quest­ed a meet­ing with the Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, to dis­cuss in­no­v­a­tive mea­sures that could be uti­lized by the Cor­po­ra­tion as part of its strate­gic di­rec­tion. He lis­tened, and sug­gest­ed that if oth­er in­terns were like-mind­ed, then he want­ed to know what their ideas were. From there, it mush­roomed in­to a com­pe­ti­tion that gave life to “In­ter­novate”.

At the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, the co­hort of in­terns from both Trinidad, and To­ba­go, ex­pressed how much they learnt dur­ing their in­tern­ship, show­cas­ing their tal­ents through po­et­ry, skits and Tik­Tok videos.

“This is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with a lead­ing com­pa­ny, and I am de­light­ed that I can work with a team to bring my idea to life,” Syd­ney said, adding, “I am re­al­ly ex­cit­ed and look­ing for­ward to its po­ten­tial im­pact.” — (UTC)