Car­ol Quash

Sharon Christo­pher is well known in cor­po­rate cir­cles—from le­gal to bank­ing and fi­nance to lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment—hav­ing com­piled a store­house of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence that she is al­ways will­ing to share.

Christo­pher is a found­ing mem­ber and for­mer pres­i­dent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Fo­rum Trinidad and To­ba­go (IWFTT), part of a glob­al or­gan­i­sa­tion aimed at sup­port­ing women in lead­er­ship po­si­tions and men­tor­ing those who are mak­ing their way up the lad­der.

The lo­cal fo­rum, now head­ed by an­oth­er cor­po­rate lead­er­ship heavy­weight, for­mer TSTT CEO Lisa Agard, com­pris­es 45 mem­bers, all of whom, like Christo­pher, are pre­pared to give of their time and knowl­edge to men­tor the younger group of fe­male lead­ers.

“The In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Fo­rum (IWF Glob­al) was launched in New York in 1974, at a time when you had this sort of first gen­er­a­tion of women lead­ers break­ing the glass ceil­ing. “They re­alised that there was a need to get to­geth­er and sup­port one an­oth­er, and that’s how it first start­ed,” Christo­pher told WE.

“But they al­so re­alised that they had to look for those who were com­ing be­hind.”

The IWF has fo­rums in 35 coun­tries with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8,400 mem­bers.

IWFTT was formed by Christo­pher in 2014 af­ter she was asked by then CEO of Sco­tia Bank Anya Schnoor to form and head a lo­cal arm.

“At that time I told her I was very busy and couldn’t be in­volved in any­thing else.”

Christo­pher said she agreed to talk to the pres­i­dent of the Ja­maican fo­rum for 15 min­utes about it.

“And an hour lat­er, I was still talk­ing to the woman be­cause I was so fas­ci­nat­ed by this group of women who are all lead­ers in every sphere of ac­tiv­i­ty but who have man­aged to rise to the top in their sphere of ac­tiv­i­ty. And the fact that the group was al­so talk­ing about sup­port­ing one an­oth­er and al­so look­ing at the women com­ing be­hind.”

Christo­pher said that be­tween 2014 and now, IWFTT, with its three cen­tral pil­lars: Con­nect, Catal­yse, and Cel­e­brate, has done a lot to help ad­vance women’s lead­er­ship at a lo­cal, re­gion­al, and even in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el.

“A lot of times peo­ple think, ‘Oh the Caribbean is just a set of lit­tle small is­lands, they don’t re­al­ly have peo­ple of val­ue.’ So it was im­por­tant for us to el­e­vate all women to sit on the world stage of IWF and let peo­ple un­der­stand what we are; what we in the Caribbean are made of. We are al­ways punch­ing above our weight; I have sat on the glob­al board, on the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee of the glob­al board … Our mem­bers go and they al­ways rep­re­sent our coun­tries, our re­gion, on the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el.”

Christo­pher, a 2022 Cha­co­nia Medal (Gold) awardee, said for some rea­son, many women are ap­pre­hen­sive to ap­proach se­nior women in their field for ad­vice.

“The re­al­i­ty is that a lot of women, some in se­nior po­si­tions—women in their late 30s, ear­ly 40s in C-suite po­si­tions—may run in­to cer­tain kinds of is­sues, but they would nev­er ap­proach more se­nior women. That’s what we are here for.”

As part of its grow­ing men­tor­ship pro­gramme, IWFTT’s Next Gen com­mit­tee, led by man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of BPD As­so­ciates Ltd, Georgina Ter­ry Cow­an, de­cid­ed it should reach out to cor­po­rate or­gan­i­sa­tions to have con­ver­sa­tions with fe­male lead­ers about some of the chal­lenges they face in their work­places.

“We call it can­did lead­er­ship con­ver­sa­tions, where women lead­ers have the right to ask us any­thing.”

The pi­lot took place in De­cem­ber 2025 with a group of women from the Guardian Group, and Christo­pher de­scribed it as a re­sound­ing suc­cess.

“The Guardian Group has al­ways been sup­port­ive of the fo­rum, with two mem­bers of the fo­rum, Pa­tri­cia Ghany (Guardian As­set Man­age­ment di­rec­tor) and Shel­ley Sylvester (COO Guardian Gen­er­al In­sur­ance), work­ing with the group.”

She said IWF of­fers an ex­treme­ly com­pet­i­tive Fel­lows pro­gramme that in­vites high-per­form­ing women from around the world to ap­ply.

“We were for­tu­nate in get­ting Shel­ley on the pro­gramme. Now she is a mem­ber of the ac­tu­al IWF fo­rum it­self.”

The Next Gen com­mit­tee is now look­ing at rolling out the lead­er­ship con­ver­sa­tions at oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions.

“It’s re­al­ly to just have women con­nect­ed and have women un­der­stand­ing that there are peo­ple who care; that they’re not alone.”

Christo­pher said in her over 30 years in the cor­po­rate world, she had re­ceived nu­mer­ous calls from peo­ple want­i­ng her ad­vice on cer­tain work-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

“There were ac­tu­al­ly on­ly two women who ever did that,” one be­ing a mentee who still works at a lo­cal bank and now holds a se­nior po­si­tion. Her dis­cus­sion with Christo­pher then cen­tred around brand­ing her­self and mov­ing for­ward.

“Gen­er­al­ly, women are very re­luc­tant to do that. On the one hand, I think they just feel un­wor­thy of do­ing it, and on the oth­er hand, they feel if the per­son says ‘no, I don’t have the time’ that the em­bar­rass­ment would kill them.”

But, she said, the IFWTT mem­bers are open to men­tor­ing women in lead­er­ship and those who as­pire to it. She ad­vised that there are nu­mer­ous ways to reach mem­bers, among them LinkedIn, email, and so­cial me­dia.

“I was men­tor­ing a young woman in South Africa last year. When I first met her, she had no idea where Trinidad was ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly, and I had nev­er been to South Africa, so I had no con­cept of South Africa as a coun­try in my head, but I was able to men­tor her. That shows you that there are no bound­aries to the ex­pe­ri­ence.”

The IWF, Christo­pher said, hosts in­cred­i­ble con­fer­ences, the most re­cent be­ing in South Africa last No­vem­ber.

“Sev­en hun­dred to 1,500 women come to­geth­er. We meet like friends and we al­so recog­nise women all over the world who are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. And that is im­por­tant be­cause when you cel­e­brate those women, it cre­ates an in­spi­ra­tion for oth­er women look­ing on. IWF is an or­gan­i­sa­tion that’s very close to my heart and one I’m hap­py to be part of.”

IWFTT fund­ing comes through dues, con­fer­ences and char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions, and mem­ber­ship is by in­vi­ta­tion. Christo­pher said the or­gan­i­sa­tion takes its mis­sion very se­ri­ous­ly—some­thing that is clear to any­one who be­comes a mem­ber.

“We have to ad­vance women’s lead­er­ship. Every woman has a right to achieve her fullest po­ten­tial in the way that she sees fit.”

Any group of women in or­gan­i­sa­tions want­i­ng to have a can­did con­ver­sa­tion with mem­bers of IWFTT, please email georgina.ter­ry@bp­das­so­ci­ates.com