Ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the ANSA McAL Group, Dr A Nor­man Sab­ga, will re­ceive the Amer­i­can Foun­da­tion for the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Lead­er­ship Award, while the ANSA McAL Group will re­ceive the Cor­po­rate Lead­er­ship Award at the foun­da­tion’s 29th an­nu­al “The Lega­cy Con­tin­ues” Schol­ar­ship Gala on April 17 in New York City.

The awards recog­nise in­di­vid­ual lead­er­ship and cor­po­rate con­tri­bu­tions to eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, ed­u­ca­tion and work­force ad­vance­ment in the Caribbean.

AFUWI, which is the pri­ma­ry US-based fundrais­ing arm of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), said, in a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, that Sab­ga has led the Trinidad and To­ba­go-based con­glom­er­ate’s ex­pan­sion across the Caribbean and the Unit­ed States. The ANSA McAL Group op­er­ates in sec­tors in­clud­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, fi­nan­cial ser­vices, me­dia and re­al es­tate and has been ac­tive in the re­gion for more than a cen­tu­ry.

AFUWI said the group’s re­gion­al foot­print aligns with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ mis­sion to sup­port ed­u­ca­tion and hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment. The com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions span sev­er­al coun­tries served by the uni­ver­si­ty.

“Dr Sab­ga and the ANSA McAL Group ex­em­pli­fy the in­ter­sec­tion of lead­er­ship, en­ter­prise and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” said Cyrus Mc­Calla, chair­man of the AFUWI board. “Their in­vest­ment in ed­u­ca­tion and hu­man de­vel­op­ment has cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for gen­er­a­tions.”

It said the group’s cor­po­rate phi­los­o­phy, “In­spir­ing Bet­ter Choic­es for a Bet­ter World,” re­flects its fo­cus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty, gov­er­nance and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing sup­port for ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tives across the Caribbean.

Sab­ga, in a state­ment, said he ac­cept­ed the award on be­half of the com­pa­ny’s em­ploy­ees.

“For over a cen­tu­ry, our group has grown along­side the re­gion - build­ing in­dus­tries, ex­pand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties and cre­at­ing last­ing val­ue,” he said.

He added that the com­pa­ny would con­tin­ue to fo­cus on growth and re­silience.

AFUWI said the gala is set to bring to­geth­er lead­ers from busi­ness, acad­e­mia, health care and pub­lic ser­vice to raise funds for schol­ar­ships for Caribbean stu­dents fac­ing fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.

It said this year’s fundrais­ing ef­fort comes as Ja­maica con­tin­ues to re­cov­er from Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, which af­fect­ed more than 1.6 mil­lion peo­ple and dis­rupt­ed ed­u­ca­tion for thou­sands of stu­dents.