Akiela Hope

Pens were Rox­anne Colthrust's best friends.The el­e­gant, soft spo­ken woman who sat in her taste­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed of­fice at Colthrust PR Pub­lic Re­la­tions Firm ad­mit­ted she al­ways found her­self jot­ting down ideas that had cre­ative el­e­ments, es­pe­cial­ly those for guest hous­es or tele­vi­sion ads that cen­tred on the pro­mo­tion of her coun­try. In fact, Colthrust's child­hood dream was to make tourism her ca­reer.

Hail­ing from the San­gre Grande com­mu­ni­ty, "Tri­ni-bred and taught," she says proud­ly, she lived a shel­tered life. As a teen at­tend­ing Holy Name Con­vent, Colthrust dab­bled in dif­fer­ent sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties like net­ball and crick­et. How­ev­er, when she de­cid­ed to take part in a game of hock­ey for the first time, she im­me­di­ate­ly made it her "first and last" since the ball de­cid­ed to cre­ate a path just two inch­es away from her nose.

"That was it for me," she said with a laugh.Her next stop was Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). It was there she took Eco­nom­ics as her first de­gree; her dreams of work­ing in the tourism field how­ev­er were put on hold.

"I want­ed to do tourism as a first de­gree, but study­ing in the Ba­hamas and pay­ing in US dol­lars was my on­ly op­tion and at that time, my par­ents could not af­ford it, hence my choice for Econ," Colthrust ex­plained. "But it helped be­cause I un­der­stood the num­bers; clients al­ways ask 'how much is this go­ing to cost' and I can eas­i­ly work it out and tell them."

Grad­u­a­tion and her first main­stream job as a loan of­fi­cer in a bank fol­lowed next. Ear­ly on though, things did not quite go as she thought..."You see, many of the clients were de­fault­ing on their loans, but I found their sto­ries were so amaz­ing," said Colthrust. "Many were farm­ers, the peo­ple who got down and dirty for us all, they're try­ing to do some­thing, you know? My man­ag­er would ask, 'Why does your port­fo­lio al­ways look like this?' I re­mem­ber one of the farm­ers in par­tic­u­lar had left his job to plant a type of hy­brid corn and he would have it avail­able for Car­ni­val when it's not nor­mal­ly in sea­son. But, he wasn't pay­ing his loan. Now to me, these were the peo­ple who I thought banks would want to hear about and should put mon­ey in­to. In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, one day the HR man­ag­er came to me and said 'Rox­anne you're not mak­ing it as a loan of­fi­cer you know, but I'd like to move you in­to PR, that's an area in which you can high­light these peo­ple.' It would be a note­wor­thy twist of fate."

Thus, Rox­anne's voy­age as a PR con­sul­tant be­gan. With­in three years of work­ing in the de­part­ment, Rox­anne found a great pas­sion and love for the busi­ness and fur­thered it by ac­quir­ing a diplo­ma in PR at UWI. Nur­tur­ing her new­found joy, her places of em­ploy­ment had a par­tic­u­lar rou­tine that was con­stant as the years changed. Want­i­ng more and feel­ing the urge to move away from the busi­ness rou­tine, in 2001 she start­ed her busi­ness, known as Colthrust PR Ltd; this to her was the high­light of her ca­reer.

Strange­ly, though, it was on­ly when she start­ed her busi­ness that the nerve fac­tor kicked in. She start­ed small, do­ing free­lance work out of her home do­ing one event at a time. Glow­ing re­views, word of mouth and her rep­u­ta­tion for re­sults spurred the move for her and her hus­band to se­cure an of­fice in 2004, in­ter­con­nect­ing her hus­band's web­site de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny.To­day, Colthrust PR Ltd has been in op­er­a­tion for the past 10 years and spe­cialis­es in craft­ing cam­paigns and com­mu­ni­ca­tion strate­gies for clients world­wide, in­clud­ing those with­in our lo­cal pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor. The com­pa­ny which al­so deals with me­dia re­la­tions, tourism pro­mo­tions and events man­age­ment just to name a few, and has done work for clients such as the Eu­ro­pean Union and Mi­crosoft.

Rox­anne ad­mits how­ev­er, that nav­i­gat­ing these process­es has not al­ways been smooth. One of her great­est chal­lenges is be­ing able to mesh cre­ativ­i­ty with busi­ness and find­ing that mid­dle path. "Most times, com­pa­nies may have ideas or know ex­act­ly what they want in terms of cre­ativ­i­ty but fall sort on their busi­ness pre­sen­ta­tion. They some­times find it hard to con­nect the two and when called up­on to present or sell their prod­uct, they are un­able to. But we find a way," Colthrust said firm­ly.

Find­ing a bal­ance be­tween her per­son­al and busi­ness life can al­so be deemed as a chal­lenge, but be­cause of her strong be­lief in God, a sup­port­ive fam­i­ly and hard work­ing team, this life test and learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence is al­ways wel­comed with great an­tic­i­pa­tion."It is chal­leng­ing to main­tain the two, and I have al­ways made grave ef­forts to do so. As a re­sult, I work very late at least twice a week, so that my week­end time with the fam­i­ly is not sac­ri­ficed," she ex­plained. "My hus­band, who is my biggest sup­port sys­tem and def­i­nite­ly my spir­i­tu­al part­ner sent from God, is al­ways there to as­sist in this as­pect. He is my voice of rea­son­ing and my peace­mak­er if I go over­board. How­ev­er, with­out God none of this would be pos­si­ble, there­fore I am al­ways grate­ful for what he has and hasn't pro­vid­ed."

The crab lover and avid read­er of in­spi­ra­tional books (in­clud­ing those by Joel Os­teen) has not giv­en up on be­ing a part of tourism, as she takes her 13 year old son and sev­en year old daugh­ter on many dif­fer­ent sight­see­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. With weight board­ing be­ing just one of the many things she does with her fam­i­ly, Rox­anne is not will­ing to stop here.

"The tourism side is still very much a part of me," she ad­mit­ted. "I just want to give my chil­dren a dif­fer­ent view of life. Still, I am glad for these twists of fate. God is a ma­jor part of my life, and with­out him, noth­ing is im­pos­si­ble."