A uni­ver­sal sigh of re­lief was breathed by the par­tic­i­pants of the fourth T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee's Ad­vanc­ing Women in Lead­er­ship Fo­rum on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, know­ing that some­one out there, have their backs.

This year's theme "Em­brac­ing Change and Trans­for­ma­tion dur­ing a Pan­dem­ic" was thor­ough­ly dealt with by the knowl­edge­able pan­el­lists and speak­ers at the vir­tu­al we­bi­nar via Zoom, leav­ing view­ers high­ly mo­ti­vat­ed to face the 'new nor­mal' that COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has pre­sent­ed.

Burst­ing with an en­thu­si­asm to share on their own ex­pe­ri­ences in sport, each speak­er rang­ing from ad­min­is­tra­tors to ac­tive ath­letes to a con­sul­tant and a med­ical ex­pert gave a bit on their back­ground but used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­cour­age all women to keep striv­ing even more dur­ing this pe­ri­od of the coro­n­avirus.

Af­ter quot­ing the fig­ure from the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum on gen­der equal­i­ty which stat­ed that it will take 217 years to reach par­i­ty, Nicole Ho­ev­ert­sz, the sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Aru­ba Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (NOC) and an Ex­ec­u­tive Mem­ber Pan Am Sports In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) mem­ber, said: "I am wor­ried and frus­trat­ed by this fig­ure. It is too long."

The for­mer syn­chro­nised swim­mer from Aru­ba was one of the three speak­ers in the sec­ond of two pan­els in the event. She opened by pay­ing homage to Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg, as­so­ciate jus­tice of the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States from 1993 un­til her death last week (Sep­tem­ber 18).

An ad­vo­cate for gen­der equal­i­ty and women's rights, win­ning many ar­gu­ments be­fore the Supreme Court, Gins­burg was an in­spi­ra­tion to Ho­ev­ert­sz who has had sev­er­al firsts in­clud­ing the first woman on the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee of the Pan Amer­i­can Sports Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

"It is great to be the first in but I have to make sure I am not the last. So it's about send­ing down the el­e­va­tor and cre­ate more op­por­tu­ni­ties for women," said Ho­ev­ert­sz, is loy­al to the Olympic Move­ment.

"The IOC (In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee) has been push­ing for Na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tions to have women in lead­er­ship po­si­tions. On the ath­letes' lev­el, it is al­most 50-50 but not in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing po­si­tions."

Ho­ev­ert­sz en­cour­aged women to do per­son­al train­ing, men­tor­ing, on­line cours­es so when the op­por­tu­ni­ty aris­es, a prospec­tive can say: "Yes, I am ready to take up a po­si­tion in lead­er­ship."

Fos­ter­ing this growth, Ho­ev­ert­sz high­light­ed the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC) pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis, who gave the wel­come ad­dress, and Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe.

"Bri­an is a dy­nam­ic leader. We are hap­py we have a pres­i­dent like him," said Ho­ev­ert­sz, adding that this is the rea­son why he is re­ferred to as "He for She." A nick­name which amused mod­er­a­tors Giselle Laronde-West, TTOC ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber, and Na­dine Khan-Seemon­gal, as­sis­tant sec­re­tary-gen­er­al, as it was the first time hear­ing of it but both vi­su­al­ly agreed with the ref­er­ence.

Ho­ev­ert­sz al­so gushed about Cud­joe, say­ing that T&T has a dy­nam­ic Min­is­ter of Sport who be­lieves in the "pow­er of sports".

Cud­joe gave the open­ing ad­dress and there was one part that stood out for all: "Women be­long". To which fea­ture speak­er Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of SISU Glob­al Well­ness, ex­pand­ed in her keynote ad­dress say­ing: "Women be­long in sport, lead­er­ship, busi­ness... every­thing." She went on to elab­o­rate on man­ag­ing stress and be­ing re­silient dur­ing this time of COVID-19 and then fol­lowed by pan­el one speak­ers of Melis­sa Pas­cal, CEO Pas­cal's Bak­ing Lim­it­ed, Priyan­ka Dhanie, Na­tion­al Archer ath­lete and Sta­cy Ann King, West In­dies women's crick­eter.

In clos­ing, Ho­ev­ert­sz shared her mantra say­ing: "She be­lieves, she could and she did."

She is liv­ing proof of this sim­ple ex­pres­sion. So too, is fel­low pan­el­list Ji­me­na Sal­dana, vice pres­i­dent Mex­i­can Olympic Com­mit­tee and vice pres­i­dent Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Sports Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CAC­SO), mem­ber of the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (ANOC).

She ad­vised the view­ers to learn to nev­er to take things per­son­al­ly and push away pol­i­tics from their re­al goals.

"Be­lieve in your in­ner voice, your in­stincts," said Sal­dana, who al­so recog­nised the work of Gins­burg, cit­ing her con­tri­bu­tion led to "re­al change" and like Ho­ev­ert­sz was in high praise of Lewis. She be­lieves men have a huge role to play in achiev­ing gen­der equal­i­ty.

"The sports world is con­trolled by men but there are those who be­lieve in women and have opened up op­por­tu­ni­ties for women. Men have the pow­er to open up op­por­tu­ni­ties for women and as Nicole said it's about 'send­ing down the el­e­va­tor' and un­der­stand the im­por­tance of open­ing doors for women."

A move great­ly sup­port­ed by Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing, the fi­nal vi­brant speak­er in the sec­ond pan­el. The con­sul­tant, pop­u­la­tion and de­vel­op­ment with a spe­cif­ic fo­cus on women, sup­port­ed all that her fel­low pan­el­lists had said and zoned in on help­ing the younger gen­er­a­tion.

"I chal­lenge women to help young women," said Lee-Sing adding that one should take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ties they have in their life. "Bloom where you are plant­ed."

As did, na­tion­al archer Dhanie who dared to launch her busi­ness at the start of the pan­dem­ic. Her busi­ness is about health and well­ness crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant dur­ing this time.

"Part of em­brac­ing change is shar­ing with oth­ers, shar­ing knowl­edge," said Dhanie, who is help­ing oth­ers man­age their men­tal health as high­light­ed by Dr Mo­hammed in her fea­ture ad­dress.

Like the oth­ers, Dr Mo­hammed has been in­spired by Gins­burg and ad­vised all to tap in­to their su­per­pow­er, which she hopes is re­silience, not fear but most im­por­tant­ly, pri­ori­tise their "well-be­ing and well­ness" dur­ing this COVID-19 pe­ri­od.