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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Lisa-Ann Joseph: PR powerhouse

by

209 days ago
20241208

“I love to sit at the feet of the gen­er­a­tions be­fore me who are good busi­ness lead­ers and ex­perts in com­mu­ni­ca­tions.” Near­ly 30 years in the com­mu­ni­ca­tions busi­ness, Lisa-Ann Joseph says she is still learn­ing, a for­ev­er stu­dent, and that “knowl­edge trans­fer trick­les in­to every sin­gle thing that I do.”

A promi­nent fig­ure in the field of pub­lic re­la­tions, cor­po­rate and cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Joseph is well known for her depth and breadth of ex­pe­ri­ence in the in­dus­try and cel­e­brat­ed a land­mark 17 years of her busi­ness, Rep­u­ta­tion Man­age­ment Caribbean (RMC), on De­cem­ber 7.

The founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of RMC, Joseph was born and bred in San Fer­nan­do. From ear­ly on, she keen­ly ob­served the var­i­ous as­pects of en­tre­pre­neur­ship, as she was part of a fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness from a young age. Ini­tial­ly in­tend­ing to pur­sue Per­form­ing Arts at the ter­tiary lev­el, she piv­ot­ed af­ter her first year in uni­ver­si­ty and ul­ti­mate­ly grad­u­at­ed with a Bach­e­lor of Arts in So­cial Sci­ences from SUNY Pur­chase in New York.

Up­on her re­turn to Trinidad, Joseph worked briefly in her fam­i­ly’s busi­ness be­fore de­cid­ing to branch out on her own, feel­ing that “I need­ed to ex­pand my hori­zons.”

Al­though she had no sig­nif­i­cant ex­pe­ri­ence in pub­lic re­la­tions, she found a job at the Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion as a PR of­fi­cer. “I had the dri­ve, I had the hus­tle, I had the grit,” Joseph re­mem­bers, as she was giv­en a chance to prove her­self in this new role and was forced to learn very quick­ly on her feet but re­calls feel­ing that PR was a seam­less, nat­ur­al fit for her.

Thir­ty years lat­er, she has re­mained in the field, ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions “move from chaos to calm.” Af­ter her ini­tial post, Joseph then ad­vanced through a se­ries of lo­cal, re­gion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al roles, from her role as the first Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er at First Cit­i­zens Bank to the Caribbean Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er for TCL Group of Com­pa­nies. With ex­pe­ri­ence, her rep­u­ta­tion as a lead­ing voice in the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions field pre­ced­ed her, and she was head­hunt­ed by Co­ca-Co­la as the pub­lic af­fairs man­ag­er for the Caribbean and sub­se­quent­ly tran­si­tioned to BP as the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er.

In these roles, she was able to “delve deeply in­to the Caribbean ex­pe­ri­ence” and de­vel­oped a strong grasp on craft­ing mes­sages for a Caribbean au­di­ence. In De­cem­ber 2007, Joseph felt that she had pro­gressed sig­nif­i­cant­ly through mul­ti­sec­toral ex­pe­ri­ence—specif­i­cal­ly in fi­nance and en­er­gy—and with that ex­pe­ri­ence, was ready to strike out on her own.

In her sub­con­scious, she was al­so prod­ded by her fa­ther’s en­cour­age­ment through­out her life to work for her­self and knew that her call­ing was to start her own busi­ness. She found great val­ue, how­ev­er, in start­ing off her ca­reer hon­ing her skills by work­ing in var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions, as­sert­ing that “if I was to be­come the re­gion­al ex­pert in cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, I knew I had to get ex­pe­ri­ence un­der my belt. My clients would not have con­fi­dence in me if I didn’t have the ex­pe­ri­ence and per­spec­tive I de­vel­oped.”

Up­on leav­ing BP, Joseph start­ed her con­sul­tan­cy, Rep­u­ta­tion Man­age­ment Caribbean, work­ing with the Na­tion­al Sec­re­tari­at for the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing card­ed for 2009 and the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as. Af­ter those first clients, al­though she has ex­pe­ri­enced ebbs and flows in the jour­ney of be­ing a busi­ness own­er, she can proud­ly say that she has pro­vid­ed ex­pert guid­ance to over 5,000 pro­fes­sion­als, in­clud­ing CEOs, chair­per­sons, board mem­bers, and front-line staff, in ar­eas rang­ing from cri­sis man­age­ment to me­dia re­la­tions.

Es­pe­cial­ly in the niche field of cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tions, RMC, led by Joseph, stands out as one of the Caribbean’s front­line agen­cies. Re­flect­ing on her jour­ney, she mus­es, “What start­ed as a one (wo)man show has grown in­to a full-ser­vice agency, ca­pa­ble of han­dling com­plex com­mu­ni­ca­tion chal­lenges for some of the re­gion’s largest multi­na­tion­als, as well as lo­cal busi­ness­es.”

Her ded­i­ca­tion to see­ing clients shine is clear in her agency’s abil­i­ty to craft mes­sag­ing that is fit for pur­pose and well suit­ed to con­text. “Peo­ple thought I was crazy,” she re­flects, “leav­ing full-time jobs where I was do­ing well to open my own busi­ness.”

Speak­ing from her faith, she re­calls that she in­trin­si­cal­ly knew that the time was right to fol­low what was al­ways her plan—to be an en­tre­pre­neur. Re­ly­ing on her net­work cul­ti­vat­ed over the years in the field, she felt con­fi­dent that fol­low­ing her first two clients, she would have a sig­nif­i­cant flow of in­com­ing in­ter­est.

Her con­fi­dence was not un­war­rant­ed, as she has had an ar­ray of clients, in­clud­ing many long-stand­ing, re­peat clients, who have been with RMC for 13 years.

The agency boasts ser­vices in or­gan­i­sa­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions, cri­sis man­age­ment, per­son­al brand­ing, and spe­cialised train­ing pro­grammes to help or­gan­i­sa­tions and their lead­ers com­mu­ni­cate ef­fec­tive­ly with the me­dia. Es­pe­cial­ly as a woman who brave­ly built her own busi­ness in a time when it was much more un­usu­al to be a self-made busi­ness­woman, Joseph has re­lied not on­ly on her ex­per­tise but al­so on her bold­ness to be­come suc­cess­ful.

For young women in­ter­est­ed in start­ing their own busi­ness, she en­cour­ages them to not be in­tim­i­dat­ed and to get qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence in the field be­fore start­ing their own.

As a life­long learn­er, she spends time go­ing on pro­grammes and do­ing self-de­vel­op­ment to al­ways keep her­self abreast of trends and de­vel­op­ments in the field. Net­work­ing, she says, whether face-to-face or on­line, is al­so a cru­cial el­e­ment in busi­ness.

Fi­nal­ly, she calls on women to “lis­ten more to the yess­es than the nos, be­cause if I lis­tened to the neg­a­tive, I would not have tak­en the leap to leave the cor­po­rate world and start my own busi­ness.”

“Once it’s eth­i­cal, le­gal, main­tains my in­tegri­ty, and up­holds my val­ues, I’m there,” she laughs, as she con­tin­ues to be flex­i­ble and ag­ile in en­sur­ing her busi­ness con­tin­ues to piv­ot where need­ed.

As a busi­ness­woman first, she says that al­though be­ing an en­tre­pre­neur is dif­fi­cult and can re­quire long days and sleep­less nights, “bal­ance is a choice.” Af­ter 17 years, Joseph cel­e­brates a mile­stone as a busi­ness own­er, dri­ven to be a lead­ing voice in the com­mu­ni­ca­tions field, with her agency con­tin­u­ing its com­mit­ment to ex­cel­lence and in­no­va­tion.


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