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Friday, July 25, 2025

Dr Karrian Hepburn-Malcolm sings her story

by

Ryan Bachoo
19 days ago
20250706

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

“I’ve shed many tears, but I’ve climbed many stairs.”

With that sin­gle lyric in her de­but song, Dr Kar­ri­an Hep­burn-Mal­colm cap­tures a jour­ney marked by re­silience and qui­et tri­umph. It’s more than a per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ny—it echoes the qui­et bat­tles and vic­to­ries we all know too well and can re­late to.

Hep­burn-Mal­colm, who has spent all of her pro­fes­sion­al life in the cor­po­rate world, took her col­leagues by sur­prise on June 27 when she re­leased her de­but song—a deeply per­son­al an­them that speaks not on­ly to her own path but to any­one who has ever over­come.

Ti­tled, Pur­pose, Ja­maican-born Hep­burn-Mal­colm re­traces her strug­gles of grow­ing up in East Kingston to hold­ing sev­er­al high-pro­file port­fo­lios in Trinidad and To­ba­go where she lived for 12-and-a-half years.

“Trinidad was a very rich ex­pe­ri­ence,” she told WE mag­a­zine last week in an in­ter­view about her new­ly re­leased song. She shared that parts of that “rich ex­pe­ri­ence” in­flu­enced the jour­ney be­hind the mu­sic.

When her for­mer col­leagues at Guardian Me­dia heard she had record­ed a song, they were ea­ger to sup­port her new en­deav­our. Pur­pose was launched on TBC ra­dio sta­tion, Sky 99.5FM in Trinidad.

Dur­ing her time in T&T, Hep­burn-Mal­colm held sev­er­al se­nior roles, in­clud­ing Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Sco­tia In­vest­ments, Vice Pres­i­dent of Sales and Ser­vice at the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor at Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed.

De­spite her pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess, Hep­burn-Mal­colm qui­et­ly held on to her first love—singing—a path her par­ents had once steered her away from.

She ex­plained, “Singing was my first love. I want­ed to be a singer, but my par­ents steered me to­wards get­ting a for­mal ed­u­ca­tion, and their ad­vice to me was to get in­to the cor­po­rate world. I think it’s be­cause they didn’t have the lux­u­ry of get­ting an ad­vanced for­mal ed­u­ca­tion; they want­ed that for me. Al­so, be­cause they were en­tre­pre­neurs, they saw the strug­gles of mak­ing an in­come when you don’t have an ed­u­ca­tion on a cer­tifi­cate.”

They urged Hep­burn-Mal­colm to try her best “not to de­vi­ate in­to the cre­ative sec­tor”.

She took their ad­vice, but nev­er let go of her pas­sion. In­stead, she sang in her school choir and par­tic­i­pat­ed in her church choir. Lat­er in life, Hep­burn-Mal­colm per­formed in lo­cal the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions in Ja­maica. To­day, she al­so con­tin­ues to sing with her praise and wor­ship team at church.

Though her ca­reer took a dif­fer­ent path, singing was nev­er far from Hep­burn-Mal­colm’s heart. Even­tu­al­ly, she felt in­spired to write and per­form a song of her own.

The song was penned in one af­ter­noon with the help of fa­mous Ja­maican mu­sic pro­duc­er, com­pos­er, mu­si­cian and singer Mikey Ben­nett. Two oth­er friends were in the stu­dio at the time, and to­geth­er they trad­ed lyrics to re­fine the song.

From the on­set, Hep­burn-Mal­colm knew she want­ed to in­spire oth­er peo­ple by singing about her rocky jour­ney.

“I re­al­ly felt a burn­ing de­sire to sing some­thing that I felt would in­spire peo­ple and would share a lit­tle bit about me be­cause I know many peo­ple don’t get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak to me in­ti­mate­ly. I get many ques­tions like: How did you do it? How were you able to achieve cer­tain things at such a young age? How were you able to thrive in an­oth­er coun­try? I get lots of ques­tions, and I have many, many mentees.”

She starts the song by singing about her up­bring­ing, “This lit­tle young thing from East Kingston no one ex­pect­ed to win, the odds seemed al­ways against me, but I found the strength with­in. I’ve shed many tears, but I’ve climbed many stairs. You’ve guid­ed my steps and my jour­ney, guide me in my pur­pose ...”

Hep­burn-Mal­colm said of the lyrics, “Mikey teach­es us that when you’re writ­ing a song, you must be sure about who it is speak­ing to. I want­ed to speak to peo­ple who have had dreams, goals, as­pi­ra­tions, but might feel daunt­ed or over­whelmed by the fact that they weren’t from ide­al cir­cum­stances. They were from the wrong so­cioe­co­nom­ic con­di­tions. They’re from the wrong parts of town. They might feel at a dis­ad­van­tage.”

She sings to a cross-sec­tion of youth who feel dis­ad­van­taged and left be­hind. Hep­burn-Mal­colm said it was an in­spi­ra­tional song.

She added, “I’m hop­ing that peo­ple take away the fact that they shouldn’t let where they were born, the hand they were dealt, be the sole de­ter­mi­nant of what they achieve. They shouldn’t feel doomed be­cause, in their minds, they weren’t dealt the hand that oth­er peo­ple were dealt, which seems more ad­van­ta­geous.

“I want to let them know that it’s okay to have doubts and fears. It’s okay to go through the times when you feel hope­less, when you feel de­spair, but I al­so want to let them know that they can be hope­ful, that they can as­pire to more. I want them to know that faith is a pow­er­ful in­gre­di­ent and that God, the Most High, is a pow­er­ful source.”

Her song has a mes­sage that can cross bor­ders, and from her time in T&T, Hep­burn-Mal­colm feels there are strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties with Ja­maica.

“I re­alise Trinidad is very sim­i­lar to Ja­maica, hav­ing lived there. Some of the chal­lenges, de­pend­ing on where you’re from and de­pend­ing on your back­ground and de­pend­ing on the ac­cess, peo­ple still fight against the grain, de­pend­ing on the hand you were dealt. Trinidad ab­solute­ly in­spired me.”

Now, hav­ing worked at the high­est lev­els of cor­po­rate jobs in the Caribbean and hav­ing re­leased her first song, Hep­burn-Mal­colm will aim to mar­ry the two.

On her hopes for the fu­ture, Hep­burn-Mal­colm said, “My hope is that I find a way to mar­ry or to use all my tal­ents and gift­ings, in­clud­ing singing. I would love to mar­ry singing with men­tor­ship. Let’s say it’s men­tor­ship through mu­sic. I would love to be able to lever­age my unique ex­pe­ri­ences, or not so unique, with my gift­ings and tal­ents. I want to die emp­ty, as they say. I want to make sure that for every tal­ent, every gift that I’ve been giv­en, I find a mean­ing­ful, pur­pose­ful way to use it. So, I am ab­solute­ly open to do­ing oth­er songs.”

The jour­ney of writ­ing and ul­ti­mate­ly singing this song has al­so been a mean­ing­ful one for her. She ex­plained, “It’s helped me find more depth to my pur­pose. So, while I get to add val­ue every day to my job, I’m al­so hap­py that I can add val­ue to so­ci­ety, not just through en­ter­tain­ment, but through words of in­spi­ra­tion and en­cour­age­ment, through singing and through this song. It re­mind­ed me that I don’t need to box my­self in.”

Since re­leas­ing the song, she has re­ceived over­whelm­ing feed­back. While the song is aimed at help­ing in­spire lis­ten­ers to find their pur­pose, it has giv­en this well-ac­com­plished cor­po­rate pro­fes­sion­al a re­newed pur­pose in life, one she in­sists she must share with the world.


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