Cherisse Moe

Bish­op Dean Knol­ly Clarke has called on the coun­try's ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­fes­sion­als to lead by ex­am­ple both in the work­place and in their per­son­al lives. Bish­op Clarke said if the pro­fes­sion is to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly, the at­ti­tude por­trayed by its mem­bers should be of the high­est stan­dard.

He was speak­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing a Thanks­giv­ing ser­vice held at the Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral, Hart Street, Port-of-Spain, to of­fi­cial­ly launch Ad­min­is­tra­tive Pro­fes­sion­als Week. This year's theme is ti­tled "Ad­mins, The Pulse of the Of­fice." Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ad­min­is­tra­tive Pro­fes­sion­als of T&T Char­maine Gomez-Dol­ly lament­ed that while the as­so­ci­a­tion had man­aged to carve its own niche in the land­scape of T&T, ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­fes­sion­als, who she de­scribed as the back­bone of all or­gan­i­sa­tions, were still not giv­en the recog­ni­tion they de­served.

"We are the pulse of the of­fice and with­out a pulse you would be dead," she said. "If we don't come out to work one day, they would be call­ing us at home. "We know where every­thing is in the of­fice. We run things. "But we are still not where we would like to be. As an as­so­ci­a­tion there is a lot of room for im­prove­ment. We are still not recog­nised for who we are."

Found­ed in 1970, Gomez-Knol­ly said the as­so­ci­a­tion, which was award­ed the Hum­ming Bird Medal in 2000, re­mains the on­ly of­fi­cial body in T&T which rep­re­sents ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­fes­sion­als. Dur­ing her year as pres­i­dent, Gomez-Knol­ly said she worked to help im­prove the im­age of the as­so­ci­a­tion and en­cour­age the pro­fes­sion­als to add val­ue to their or­gan­i­sa­tions by "al­ways putting their best foot for­ward."

"Be­ing an ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­fes­sion­al is not mere­ly about a po­si­tion...It's about how you car­ry your­self," she said. "We must all fol­low the code of ethics and be ex­em­plars in our work­places." Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments was pres­i­dent-elect, Eileen Black­man, who stat­ed that ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­fes­sion­als were not mere­ly sec­re­taries but spanned a wide range of fields, in­clud­ing of­fice man­agers, ex­ec­u­tive as­sis­tants and com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­fes­sion­als.

"There are peo­ple still think of us as sec­re­taries and that's the rea­son we changed the name from the Na­tion­al Sec­re­taries As­so­ci­a­tion to the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ad­min­is­tra­tive Pro­fes­sion­als," she said. "We re­al­ly do it all."

The ser­vice al­so paid trib­ute to Joyce Pati­no, a long-stand­ing mem­ber of the as­so­ci­a­tion, who died ear­li­er this month, as well as Cos­ta Ri­can Am­bas­sador Ri­car­do Thomp­son Thomp­son, who was hailed as be­ing very in­stru­men­tal in as­sist­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion with its many ven­tures over the past year.