At 50, Car­olyn Gopaul says she feels con­tent­ed and fab­u­lous. Hav­ing grap­pled with a mys­te­ri­ous void in her heart and the con­cerns of be­ing a full-fig­ured woman, the act­ing Hu­man Re­sources Man­ag­er of Met­al In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny-In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (MIC-IT), has found her strength. She has come to em­brace her­self; from her pur­ple, red or blue hair­styles right down to her blinged-out match­ing man­i­cures and pedi­cures.

"It’s a bless­ing to be this age and be at the lev­el that I am at per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly. I wouldn’t trade my jour­ney for any­thing in this world," Gopaul told the Sun­day Guardian re­cent­ly, her hair a lu­mi­nes­cent green and dark blue short cut.

In her 29 years as an em­ploy­ee of MIC-IT, Gopaul has seen projects like the Mono­gram Prod­ucts pro­gramme of the ear­ly 1990s where lo­cals pro­duced hand-paint­ed plas­tic fig­urines and Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions for Hall­mark Cards Inc, the steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­gramme and in­roads in the lo­cal man­u­fac­ture of plas­tic moulds and con­tain­ers.

MIC-IT was es­tab­lished in 1974 to de­vel­op the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try and fo­cussed on tool and die mak­ing and pre­ci­sion en­gi­neer­ing. It cur­rent­ly of­fers Tech­ni­cal and Vo­ca­tion­al Train­ing, In­dus­try Ser­vices, and Con­struc­tion Ser­vices.

Carolyn Gopaul

As part of the in­sti­tu­tion, Gopaul has cham­pi­oned the ad­vance­ment of ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­fes­sion­als and along­side the prin­ci­pals of the Train­ing Di­vi­sion, helped fa­cil­i­tate the suc­cess of trainees. When one grad­u­ate of MIC-IT land­ed a job in the con­struc­tion of the 443-feet tall Lon­don Eye on the Riv­er Thames, Eu­rope’s tallest re­volv­ing ob­ser­va­tion wheel and the UK’s most pop­u­lar tourist at­trac­tion, she was there to cel­e­brate with her col­leagues. Through most of her ex­pe­ri­ences, how­ev­er, Gopaul car­ried a deep void which on­ly two ma­jor life-chang­ing events could fill.

Hav­ing worked her way up from a tele­phone op­er­a­tor/re­cep­tion­ist at MIC-IT, Gopaul moved to var­i­ous cler­i­cal po­si­tions and then be­came a sec­re­tary in the in­sti­tu­tion’s Train­ing De­part­ment and lat­er an ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tant in the Cor­po­rate Di­vi­sion. De­spite her pro­fes­sion­al ad­vance­ments, a piece of her was miss­ing, she felt. Un­able to ful­ly iden­ti­fy the rea­son for the empti­ness in her soul, she sensed that it was tied to her low self-con­fi­dence as a re­sult of her body size. Her moth­er’s death 14 years ago would pro­pel Gopaul to re-in­vent her­self.

"When my mum left me in 2006, I was dev­as­tat­ed. I was the last; the spoilt child and when she left I felt alone al­though I had my broth­ers and sis­ters. I felt in­com­plete. Then I start­ed learn­ing that I had to pick my­self up. I said to my­self maybe this was my call­ing to be as strong as my mum was.”

Hav­ing ob­served her moth­er take on the task of rais­ing eight chil­dren when Gopaul’s fa­ther passed away, Gopaul re­mem­bered her moth­er as a woman with an in­domitable spir­it, nev­er look­ing to oth­ers for hand­outs.

Carolyn Gopaul

"None of the oth­ers was old enough to work, so she made what­ev­er pen­sion ben­e­fits she got work. The way my mum would han­dle things is she nev­er re­lied on any­one. She raised her fam­i­ly al­most sin­gle-hand­ed­ly," re­called Gopaul who was sev­en when her fa­ther died.

"My mum al­ways said to me: If I wash on the riv­er stone, my chil­dren have to wash in a wash­ing ma­chine."

De­ter­mined to em­u­late the old­er la­dy and en­cour­aged by her nieces, Lind­say and Kavi­ta, and nephew Amit, with whom she had a close bond, Gopaul re-ded­i­cat­ed her­self to her aca­d­e­m­ic de­vel­op­ment in her late 30s. Al­ready the hold­er of an As­so­ciate’s de­gree, she com­plet­ed a first de­gree and even­tu­al­ly gained a Mas­ter’s in Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment in 2017 at the School of Busi­ness and Com­put­er Sci­ence (SBCS) via its Heri­ot-Watt pro­gramme.

Along the way, she pro­gressed to Se­nior Ad­min­is­tra­tive co­or­di­na­tor, Train­ing and De­vel­op­ment at MIC-IT and al­so be­came a mem­ber of the YTEPP board. Change would al­so come in how Gopaul saw her phys­i­cal self.

"I have a friend. Her name is Pa­tri­cia Al­leyne. I re­mem­ber the day I ironed a white T-shirt and square-look­ing jeans and wore them to work. She pulled my T-shirt which I felt looked so good and said to me: Does every­thing you wear have to look like a tent?"

Ini­tial­ly of­fend­ed by the com­ment, Gopaul end­ed up on a shop­ping trip with her friend and was amazed at the end­less flat­ter­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for her full-fig­ured body.

Carolyn Gopaul embraces her nieces, Kavita, left and Lindsay.

"I was nev­er that flam­boy­ant. I was nev­er that brave. I al­ways felt as a full-fig­ured woman, I need­ed to hide my­self," she ad­mit­ted.

Af­ter ob­serv­ing some stu­dents do hair colour­ing, man­i­cures, and pedi­cures as part of their beau­ty and cos­me­tol­ogy course at YTEPP, she pre­sent­ed her­self for a hair colour makeover.

"I went with pur­ple and the pur­ple looked hot!" she re­called.

Next, she ex­per­i­ment­ed with green, then flam­ing red and has since made her choice of hair tone de­pen­dent on her mood. She has al­so come to cher­ish spa days for men­tal and phys­i­cal self-care.

"The flam­boy­ance came as an aware­ness to em­brace who you are. Love your­self as you are. It’s al­so a sig­nal that hey, I am com­ing. I am here.

"Be­cause you’re plus-sized it doesn’t mean you have to blend in­to the back­ground. You have to rep­re­sent; show that you’re here; big and beau­ti­ful…brave," she added.

A trip to Aus­tralia spon­sored by her niece Lind­say last year would com­plete Gopaul’s heal­ing. Un­en­thu­si­as­tic about spend­ing an­oth­er va­ca­tion in the US, Gopaul was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised one day when she opened an email and found plane tick­ets from Lind­say, who lives in Aus­tralia.

A scenic dri­ve along the Aus­tralian coast­line and through rain­forests on the Great Ocean Road and vis­its to Twelve Apos­tles—lime­stone pil­lars in the ocean—the Syd­ney Opera House, the Ot­t­away Tree Top walk—an iron bridge walk­way 800 feet in the air above the trees—and trips to sev­er­al beach­es were snap­shots of her va­ca­tion. De­spite thoughts that she might just ex­pire in the 40-de­gree C heat, Gopaul thor­ough­ly rel­ished the ex­cit­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and re­turned home com­plete­ly re­vi­talised.

"I just knew when I came back from Aus­tralia I wasn’t the same per­son I was when I had left. Aus­tralia com­plete­ly healed me with­out even a scar," she said.

As for her new role as Hu­man Re­sources Man­ag­er, Gopaul said she has had lots of help tran­si­tion­ing. Her long-time boss, Kei­th To­by, whom she likened on­to her moth­er, has been a great men­tor, as have the "dy­nam­ic" ex­ec­u­tives who al­ways lend sup­port to her.

She is ap­pre­cia­tive of the young team in her charge and be­lieves her re­newed spir­it can on­ly bring ben­e­fits.

"We have to re­mem­ber we are here to lead each oth­er home. We are in com­pe­ti­tion with no one and we need to help each oth­er be the best we can be," she said.

Carolyn Gopaul often changes up her hair colour.

Q&A with Car­olyn

What are some of the lessons your moth­er taught you?

My mum shaped me in­to the per­son that I am. She di­rect­ed me to get in­volved in the church and al­ways en­cour­aged me to do good, be hon­est and treat peo­ple fair­ly… live a good life. And be­cause of this, I don’t feel that I’m bet­ter than any­one.

What kept you go­ing through your tough­est times?

My nieces and nephew, Lind­say, Kavi­ta, and Amit. Al­though I don’t have chil­dren, I con­sid­er them my chil­dren and they’re fierce­ly pro­tec­tive and sup­port­ive of me. Be­cause of them, I went back to school to do my first de­gree and then my Mas­ter’s and then I’m al­ways try­ing to de­vel­op in some way. I think God must have craft­ed them specif­i­cal­ly and placed them in­to my life and said: You’re go­ing to need these three so hold on to them. I al­so had the sup­port of fam­i­ly in terms of who I was be­com­ing, es­pe­cial­ly my el­der sis­ters, Lynette and Grace.

MIC-IT is re­spon­si­ble for well-known pro­grammes like HYPE (Help­ing You Pre­pare for Em­ploy­ment), MuST (Mul­ti-Sec­tor Skills Train­ing), the Na­tion­al Skills De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (NS­DP) and Re­new­able En­er­gy pro­grammes, among oth­ers, tell me about some of the pro­grammes and achieve­ments, like in Steel­pan Man­u­fac­tur­ing for in­stance.

The pan is our na­tion­al in­stru­ment and it was the brain­child of our chair­man Prof Im­bert to bring the Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing for de­vel­op­ing the steel­pan. It’s go­ing on in Laven­tille. We have al­ways sup­port­ed na­tion­al cul­ture. Un­lock­ing Your True Pro­fes­sion­al Po­ten­tial is one of our crown­ing glo­ries. Lat­er on, we fond­ly re­ferred to it as The Un­lock­ing Se­ries. It is geared to­wards ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­fes­sion­als. We felt it nec­es­sary to have a fo­rum to in­tro­duce lead­ers in our so­ci­ety to share their ex­pe­ri­ences about where they came from and where they are now. The first one was held in 2007. In 2019 we held it on a small­er scale and the last time we held it pub­licly was in 2018 when our beloved AG, Faris Al-Rawi, was our fea­ture speak­er. The re­sponse was al­ways awe­some. When peo­ple see oth­ers map­ping their lives, and yes there are go­ing to be rough wa­ters, some rough times, but they see that if you nav­i­gate it they too can get there; be per­sis­tent, have a plan. MIC-IT al­so buried a time cap­sule for In­di­an Ar­rival Day 1995 for the 150th an­niver­sary of the ar­rival of East In­di­ans in T&T at the Ma­ha Sab­ha grounds. It’s to be opened on the 200th an­niver­sary.

How has the pan­dem­ic af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions at MIC-IT?

We have class­es on­line. Our man­age­ment met fre­quent­ly vir­tu­al­ly al­though we were on na­tion­al lock­down at one point. We en­cour­age stu­dents to stay the course, get their cer­ti­fi­ca­tion be­cause it’s im­por­tant. When this pan­dem­ic breaks by ear­ly next year, I’m be­ing hope­ful, we have to get back to nor­mal. We have nav­i­gat­ed some tough wa­ters, but ad­min is pulling things to­geth­er, so we seem to have got­ten the sup­port of the stu­dents thus far.