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Monday, June 30, 2025

Pilgrim elected first female chair of Caribbean RADO

by

Sport Desk
16 days ago
20250614
New Chairperson of the Caribbean Regional Anti-Doping Organisation (RADO), Dr Karen Pilgrim (centre) with members of the Executive Committee.

New Chairperson of the Caribbean Regional Anti-Doping Organisation (RADO), Dr Karen Pilgrim (centre) with members of the Executive Committee.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Dr. Karen Pil­grim is the new chair­per­son of the Caribbean Re­gion­al An­ti-Dop­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tion (RA­DO), be­com­ing the first fe­male to hold the po­si­tion in the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s his­to­ry.

Dr. Pil­grim, the cur­rent Mem­ber Coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Guyana, was elect­ed un­op­posed dur­ing the re­cent An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing held in Bar­ba­dos over the week­end.

The re­tired vet­eri­nar­i­an and for­mer vice-pres­i­dent of the Guyana Olympic As­so­ci­a­tion pre­vi­ous­ly held the role of Di­rec­tor on the Caribbean RA­DO Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee.

Dr Pil­grim takes over the po­si­tion pre­vi­ous­ly held by Aru­ba’s Patrick Wer­le­man, who led the Caribbean RA­DO from 2019 to 2025.

As she takes the helm of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, she be­lieves that part­ner­ships will be in­stru­men­tal over the next three years.

“Our re­la­tion­ships with our re­spec­tive gov­ern­ments and Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees will be of para­mount im­por­tance. We need to de­vel­op more hu­man re­sources with re­spect to an­ti-dop­ing with­in our re­gion.

“While the Caribbean RA­DO has done a lot as an or­gan­i­sa­tion, our goal now is to build greater ca­pac­i­ty in each of our 18 Mem­ber Coun­tries,” Dr Pil­grim said.

“We would love to see at least one ded­i­cat­ed full-time staffer as­signed to an­ti-dop­ing pro­grammes in each coun­try. In­creas­ing fund­ing will al­so be a pri­or­i­ty for our or­gan­i­sa­tion, fol­low­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of our mar­ket­ing com­mit­tee.”

The oth­er mem­bers of the new Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee have been elect­ed un­op­posed.

Wer­le­man now holds the role of vice-chair, while for­mer vice-chair Adri­an Lorde of Bar­ba­dos along with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Rheeza Grant re­turn as Di­rec­tors.

The newest mem­ber of the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee is Mitchell de Palm of Bonaire who al­so heads the Mar­ket­ing Com­mit­tee.

He says en­sur­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the or­gan­i­sa­tion will be an area of fo­cus.

“Rev­enue gen­er­a­tion will be one of the ma­jor things on our agen­da.

“The pri­ma­ry task right now is as­sess­ing our pre­vi­ous ef­forts, build­ing on those ef­forts, while ex­plor­ing new ap­proach­es to se­cur­ing fund­ing for fu­ture en­deav­ors. These ini­tia­tives will then ben­e­fit all of our mem­ber ter­ri­to­ries,” de Palm said.

The Caribbean RA­DO AGM was held on June 8, cap­ping off an in­tense week­end that in­clud­ed a Mem­ber Coun­try Ca­pac­i­ty Build­ing Train­ing Work­shop on the An­ti-Dop­ing Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Man­age­ment Sys­tem (ADAMS), which was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Cana­di­an Cen­tre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) and the World An­ti-Dop­ing Agency (WA­DA).

As the Caribbean RA­DO plans for its next strate­gic cy­cle 2026-2030, Mem­ber Coun­try Rep­re­sen­ta­tives al­so en­gaged in an in-depth Strate­gic Plan­ning Work­shop un­der the guid­ance of Jane Rum­ble, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive of Unit­ed King­dom (UK) An­ti-Dop­ing on June 7.

There was al­so a joint cel­e­bra­to­ry din­ner with hosts Na­tion­al An­ti-Dop­ing Com­mis­sion (NADC) of Bar­ba­dos, mark­ing key mile­stones for both or­gan­i­sa­tions.

The Caribbean RA­DO cel­e­brates its 20th an­niver­sary on No­vem­ber 12, while NADC Bar­ba­dos cel­e­brates its 25th An­niver­sary this year.

The Vir­gin Is­lands have been cho­sen as the hosts of the 2026 AGM which will be held in St Thomas.

CMC


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