Matthew Chin
Reporter
matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt
Meet Gail Figaro, the business excellence consultant who is dedicated to helping companies achieve their full potential by sculpting the contours of excellence. With her expertise and experience, Figaro can help take businesses to new heights of success as she guides you on a path towards excellence to unlock your company’s true potential.
But this comes at a cost, as certain sacrifices must be made. This may involve letting go of long-standing practices that have become mediocre and instead embracing transparency, accountability, and the courage to speak truth to power without fear of negative consequences.
The entrepreneur who founded Phi-Onyx Services Ltd in 2022 and works as the principal consultant of the firm helps executives execute the uncomfortable change in business that is necessary to reap the results critical for survival.
Even in her personal life, Figaro knows what it means to adjust to survive.
Figaro’s ability to endure and adjust to difficult situations has proven invaluable in her personal life, allowing her to overcome obstacles and reach her desired outcomes.
In her younger days, Figaro grew up in New Grant, Princes Town, surrounded by a plethora of green. It was there she developed a passion for reading and writing and considered several careers, ranging from wildlife photographer for National Geographic to journalism, even considering running off to join Green Peace at one point. But despite her dreams continuing to multiply in scope, they were overshadowed by the reality that she and her family lived near the not-so-friendly poverty line.
“I was the youngest of four children; my mom was a housewife, and my father worked various jobs throughout our lives—taxi driver, truck driver, owner of a parlour ... there were) a lot of stretches without income,” Figaro said.
Figaro excelled in her academic studies for CXC and A-levels but knew that any plans to further her education would be skewered by the financial constraints that already had her parents in a chokehold.
“When (my parents) asked if I wanted to go to university, I said, ‘absolutely not’, then went to the back of the house and cried, because, at the end of the day, that wasn’t feasible. I didn’t think it was fair to put that expectation on people who really couldn’t manifest that for me,” Figaro admitted.
Between forms 5 and 6, Figaro’s first job was at a chicken farm, where she worked from Sunday to Sunday, 12 hours per day—not only cleaning and maintaining the pens that housed one thousand chickens each but also collecting their eggs and burning dead chickens—all for only one hundred and fifty dollars a week. Her summer at that time required even harder work as the result of a major loss to her family.
“My dad passed away when I was in Form Five, so I used that summer to earn money to help buy my school shirts and a little stationery for me to be able to get to Form Six. From there, I went into the workforce,” Figaro said.
She noted her life took a significant turn when she developed an interest in health and safety after realising she “wanted to serve” and was “good at pushing paper,” questioning now what else was there to succeed at.
Taking the initiative to strengthen her human capital and elevate her employability, Figaro obtained affordable certifications with some financial assistance from her sister. This, in addition to earning several qualifications along the way, led her to secure the position of health and safety and properties coordinator for a tech company called ILLUMINAT (which later became Massy Technologies), working for almost 14 years and ending her career there as a regional director spearheading the health and safety unit for five companies across five Caribbean nations.
Lost deep in Papa Bois’ forest
In the early 2000s, local businessman Peter Watson and the then local councillor of Moruga, Francis Paul, teamed up with Figaro to bring Moruga to the forefront of local media. Watson had a small satellite operation at the time that gave him a licence to provide a version of cable within a five-mile radius for those in Moruga lacking access to “the full spectrum of cable.”
Agreeing to the initiative, the group decided to venture into the then-untouched wilderness of the Moruga forest to showcase the lesser-known pearls of Moruga—the leatherback sea turtle nesting sites and the capuchins and red howler monkeys that lived together—for his television station. Also tagging along for the adventure were Figaro’s fiancé at the time and two hunters, the older of whom she swears to this day was Papa Bois, protector of forests.
“I’m telling you, the man was in his seventies and moving like a deer in the forest,” Figaro recalled.
Starting the trip, the group climbed up the middle hill of the Trinity Hills to get to the top, from where content would be shot. It took hours. The plan was to camp there for one night and then go down the other side of the mountain that faced the sea. But the seemingly pleasant experience of being “one” with nature soon turned the field trip into a test of survival. After they descended the mountainside, the tallest member of the group collapsed from exhaustion, which, even after mildly recovering, rendered him ill and unable to continue the trek. As a result, the two hunters decided to make camp right where they were—a move that would later prove to be a mistake.
“That night, we ended up having the heaviest rainfall of the year (lucky us). And a neap tide came in. We ended up getting soaked that night. And some of the pathways we traversed became small rivulets. (But) we said, no problem, the hunters are leading the way ...” Figaro added.
With their prior paths through the bush eliminated by the heavy rain and tide, they were forced to create a new path through the forest.
When the group went to seek help, they were met with a dip in the earth. As a way of getting to the other side, the hunters ran, using their momentum to reach it. But councillor Paul chose a different route two feet to the left. Two feet that woke up something big.
“My dad used to be a hunter. And I never went with him, but I remember him saying, ‘You always follow the footpath of the first man. You don’t deviate left or right if you’re in the raw forest—that’s a rule, okay?’” Figaro said.
Running down a fresh path through the bushes, Figaro forgot the advice and followed Paul, only to hear him retreating, yelling for her to go back. After the animal had been stepped on, she was met with its pink agape mouth, which stood out from the clay in which it had been camouflaged. The threatened and agitated viper, commonly known as the ‘bushmaster’, measuring close to six feet in length, readied itself. The South girl feared being sent straight to the heavenly gates. Noticing the escalation, and in panic, her fiancé grabbed her arm, pulling her up. The viper then lunged towards her heel, striking her sneaker and missing her exposed calf by inches. Recalling the near-death experience, she said that at that moment she started crying.
“When I got up to the top, I wept. The only place that I know that has anti-venom is at Sangre Grande. We’re lost in Moruga. This was not going to be a good plan for me,” Figaro said, recounting the thoughts that rushed through her mind.
After one of the hunters shot the bushmaster and killed it, she was now more aware than before of the dangers around and under her. Terrified of meeting another surprise with fangs, she decided that crossing the dip and going farther into the forest was not an option. Paul, feeling guilty about what happened, returned to the other side.
The group was now met with a crossroads: stay together or split up? They agreed to the latter, a strategy that some of us Trinis may not take if lost in any of our forests. (Let it be known that, as understood in Trinidadian folklore, Papa Bois, using camouflage, lures hunters into the forest to get them lost. Ironically, Figaro and her companions got lost.)
“The three of us ended up walking along the coastline. They (the hunters) ended up being found a day and a half before us. We survived on burnt coconut and river water,” Figaro said.
Making camp, they lit a fire on the beach. It was there, as Figaro described, that “conversations with God” and “a lot of deals” were made. She laughed, recalling the situation of them being lost for a day and a half.
It was on the last day of their three-day Moruga experience that they heard an ominous rustling of bushes coming down from the mountain, which, according to Figaro, was not a threat, but the overseer of an old cocoa estate whose eyes caught the light of the fire.
“He saw the fire from where the barracks were and came down to investigate. He took us up to the cocoa estate, where we got a fresh change of clothes, fried some eggs, and spent the night there on a mattress on the floor; it was one of the best night sleeps, ever. And he radioed for help,” Figaro said.
The next morning the trio were taken by pirogue to the village of La Retriate in Moruga, closing the last chapter of their ordeal.
On losing loved ones, cancer, divorce
Figaro recounted her challenges. While growing up and into adulthood, she had to write and deliver the eulogies for her mother, father, and brother amid her divorce and a cancer scare.
“I found out that my mother was battling stage-four cancer last minute because my older siblings decided to not let me know anything until she was on the cusp of a very major surgery that they weren’t sure she was going to come out of,” Figaro said. Her mother passed away in 2014.
On the day of her mother’s funeral, one of Figaro’s most cherished cousins got into a major car accident and was hospitalised for several weeks in the ICU and passed away thereafter, leaving an eight-month-old daughter behind–a “double blow”, Figaro described, to her family.
Her first daughter, Genesis, also had to undergo surgery for an umbilical hernia. In 2015 Figaro decided to pursue a Masters in Organisational Psychology at the age of 38. The following year she received a phone call that her brother had collapsed.
“(He) was the first guru and mentor of my life. I rushed to San Fernando General ... I was in the room with him when he passed away. He left behind my first two nieces, [and] his wife,” Figaro said.
And dealing with these deaths while hitting the books, Figaro discovered that she had cervical cancer.
“They (the doctors) found it soon as possibly as they could’ve. And through surgical intervention, they were able to deal without me having to navigate radiation, chemotherapy, etc,” Figaro said.
Reflecting on the back-to-back series of events, Figaro said it was crazy. Proving enough to have made her consider it necessary to escape in a “big” way.
Learning gratitude from the Warao People
If you’ve lived in Trinidad for quite some time, you’re more than likely to have heard, “Yuh behaving like ah Warahoon!” a saying meant to call out jokingly a person’s misbehaviour and naughtiness. Years after the trauma of Moruga and the loss of family, Figaro ventured alone to the Amazon Basin. For weeks under the cover of thick forest, she lived with the Warao, an Indigenous Amerindian people native to Venezuela, Guyana, and Suriname, whose huts line the Orinoco Delta.
The Amazon is not only home to jaguars, caimans, and piranhas, but over 300 species of snakes, including the green anaconda, the coral, and different species of the bushmaster. But Figaro’s love affair with raw nature built since she was a child paired with the urgency with which she felt to leave Trinidad, were more powerful than the fear of danger.
“I saw a people who were so content and so at peace with all the things that we (Trinis) think we need. There’s no cellular connection, no electricity, none of the things we take for granted. They were in tune and respectful of what sustains them,” Figaro said.
Despite the lack of electricity, phones, and other gadgets that take up most of our time, what made the biggest impression on her was the people’s ability to live a good life without the influence of technology. Figaro learnt gratitude from this experience.
“I remember having a conversation through the intercessor with one of the women of the tribe, I was kind of summarising what I had been through, and she said ‘Find a way to seek gratitude, in everything, even in the hardest things,’” Figaro said. “I remember going out by myself, and I was lying on (a makeshift deck) ... and I remember saying out loud, ‘I’m so grateful I had the mom I had to raise me the way she did. I am grateful that my brother taught me spirituality and being open-minded and non-judgmental of other people. I’m glad I found the cancer when I did because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here ...’”
Equity vs equality
Learning from the myriad of difficult experiences and others that wrought out of her the version of who she needed to become, Figaro is still learning, more so now from the battleground of business. Although she carries the charge of leading business professionals towards bettering themselves and calling out mediocrity in the workplace, she admitted that she’s had to deal with certain attitudes that her male counterparts often do not.
“As a woman, I have been the recipient of bias, and I’ve had to deal with some male energies that weren’t great in the journey,” Figaro said. “But that hasn’t been all of them ... some of the most powerful energies I’ve had to lift me in my professional path have been male. So, I can’t discount that.”
When it comes to earning one’s position in an organisation, selecting a candidate based on the principle of equity instead of equality makes sense, Figaro said, in terms of attending to what businesses need to become stronger.
“I am much more a supporter of equity than equality. I do believe persons come from different backgrounds and social origins ... and I do think that professionally that should be recognised ... I do not necessarily believe that because you are of a particular race or gender, you should automatically be entitled to a particular role or privilege just because we’re trying to meet a quota,” Figaro said.
She advised women to not wait for success to fall on their laps but rather to pursue it with commitment. Also, defining success as a balanced life, which shifts daily, moment to moment.
“Success, to me, comes down to being able to balance what you need physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. To me, if you are succeeding in the physical realm—the money, the houses, the assets—but you’re empty in the mental space ... something is still not balanced ... Success is not stagnant, it moves. We need to be able to flow with it.”
Although Figaro’s past was nothing short of turbulent, she has been able to harness her willpower to achieve her goals, letting nothing stop her.
Possessing ample knowledge of what constitutes healthy and conducive business practices versus archaic and detrimental methodologies, Figaro shared with the Sunday Guardian WE magazine several unsettling phenomena she has observed among workers at different ranks across the Caribbean region, including T&T.
1. “There is a tendency by some to use the concept of ‘tact’ to mask facts that should be responsibly communicated so that management of expectations and trust equity can be preserved. Tact has its rightful place in business communications but should not be used to mask truths unnecessarily.”
2. “Saying, ‘Okay, let me look into that and get back to you’ to a staff member and then not following through.” This, according to Figaro, has a cumulative effect over time on team members feeling voiceless and unheard. “If you commit as a manager or supervisor to getting information back to an employee, then simply keep your word to do so.”
3. “Hoarding of knowledge. Again, while there are leaders who excel in mentoring, coaching, and facilitating knowledge transfer, on occasion, you find managers or supervisors who guard processes, client-related information, etc, so voraciously that it seriously impedes succession planning.”
4. Regarding workers in general, Figaro argues that there is a mindset of having “a lot of rights (which is true)” without acknowledgement of their responsibilities to the company they work for. “It is, ultimately, a balance. One should not aggressively lobby for rights without also seeking to ensure you meet your responsibilities to an organisation as far as is practicable.”
More about Figaro
Gail Figaro was the judge for AMCHAM’s HSSE National Awards last year and was the first person from the Caribbean/LATAM region to have the “Recognised Excellence Expert” (REE) designation conferred by the Business Excellence Institute (BEX). She is also a senior lead auditor for the ISO 45001 standard. Figaro received the Dissertation of the Year Award in 2017 for her Master’s Degree at the University of Liverpool. She currently works as the principal consultant for Phi-Onyx Services Ltd, and is the chairman of the advisory committee for TCM Group Ltd.