Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

One year ago to­day, Oc­to­ber 1, 2022, Teoc­ah Arieal Ain­ka Dove an­swered the call to re­frame her mind, soul and path ahead.

At her high­est weight of 325 pounds, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly nav­i­gat­ing a de­mand­ing ca­reer in in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and her role as a so­cial en­tre­pre­neur, Teoc­ah stood on the precipice of burnout and con­front­ed the loom­ing spec­tre of long-term obe­si­ty-re­lat­ed health com­pli­ca­tions. Not recog­nis­ing the per­son in the mir­ror and see­ing the re­flec­tion of grave con­cern in the eyes of her loved ones, she walked away from her ca­reer and busi­ness and em­barked on an in­def­i­nite sab­bat­i­cal.

WE took a deep dive with Dove, who shared her sto­ry on how she re­de­fined her tra­jec­to­ry to re­claim her health and re­design her per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al path.

Not be­ing a sta­tis­tic

As a young girl from Crown Trace, En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, a clas­si­fied “hot spot”, who sat Com­mon En­trance and passed for Cen­tre (Ex­cel Edu Cen­tre) to be ex­act and then on­to Ch­agua­nas Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive, where she grad­u­at­ed as Vale­dic­to­ri­an at A lev­els. Her for­mi­da­ble aca­d­e­m­ic ca­reer led her to be­com­ing a Chevening Schol­ar, be­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised by the Queen and be­ing a grad­u­ate from renowned in­sti­tu­tions such as Bris­tol and Cam­bridge. “It is my fam­i­ly’s love, in­vest­ment and sup­port that en­sured I was a suc­cess and not a sta­tis­tic of my en­vi­ron­ment.”

But her own un­healthy re­la­tion­ship with the in­un­dat­ing de­mands of life al­most led her to be a med­ical sta­tis­tic, one that struck a chord deep with­in her heart and led her to de­fin­i­tive med­ical man­age­ment and lifestyle changes, pri­ori­tis­ing her well-be­ing.

Af­ter a se­ries of per­son­al in­ter­ven­tions by fam­i­ly, friends and her men­tor, it was the ex­pe­ri­ences of shat­ter­ing chest pains in which she thought she was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing heart at­tacks, on­ly to be in­formed af­ter sev­er­al tests that she was stressed, cou­pled with an un­recog­nis­able im­age of her­self, that fi­nal­ly led her to re­alise that she was on the cusp of se­vere burnout and had to take ac­tion.

One year lat­er, and near­ly 100 pounds gone, she has dras­ti­cal­ly re­de­fined her tra­jec­to­ry, forg­ing a bal­anced path in her per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life. In­te­grat­ing a well-be­ing ap­proach with as­sertive med­ical man­age­ment of in­sulin re­sis­tant Poly­cys­tic Ovary Syn­drome (PCOS), this young mil­len­ni­al is back at it, with a re­newed vigour and a re­de­fined rubric to ap­proach­ing work.

A pas­sion for so­cial in­no­va­tion

Cur­rent­ly, Dove serves as the Task III Lead with the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID) En­er­gy Sec­tor Re­form (ESR) Project for the Caribbean. In this role, she leads the port­fo­lios for Ca­pac­i­ty De­vel­op­ment, Col­lab­o­ra­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions with­in the 13-coun­try project.

 Pri­or to this role, Dove served with Deutsche Gesellschaft für In­ter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit GmbH (GIZ) (2019-2022) as the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Vis­i­bil­i­ty Ad­vi­sor, Tech­ni­cal As­sis­tance Pro­gramme for Sus­tain­able En­er­gy in the Caribbean. Since 2018, to date, she al­so worked as a long-term con­sul­tant with the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB), the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) and the Healthy Caribbean Coali­tion (HCC) in the ar­eas of youth de­vel­op­ment, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, in­no­va­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions for pub­lic health and cli­mate change and health. Dove al­so found­ed and leads a so­cial en­ter­prise, Ha­coet So­cial In­no­va­tion So­lu­tions.  

In recog­ni­tion of her hu­man­i­tar­i­an and phil­an­thropic con­tri­bu­tions, in Sep­tem­ber 2022, Dove was award­ed the Na­tion­al Youth Award for Ser­vice and Hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism. She has al­so been recog­nised by sev­er­al pres­ti­gious bod­ies glob­al­ly, most no­tably among them, Her Majesty Queen Eliz­a­beth II, who con­ferred Teoc­ah with the Queen’s Young Leader Award at Buck­ing­ham Palace in 2015 and His Majesty King Mo­hammed VI, Pol­i­cy Cen­ter for the New South–Mo­roc­co, who recog­nised her as one of the 40 emerg­ing lead­ers from across the At­lantic in that same year. 

“I would say that my life is a jour­ney of tes­ti­monies. Not for a minute do I take for grant­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ties that I have had and think of them as my own great­ness. I take it as God’s work in me, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause of the work that I do, of God’s work in me to­wards the ad­vance­ment of His will.”

Full cir­cle mo­ments

“Tu­valu will be my full cir­cle mo­ment. At the age of 16, I start­ed vol­un­teer­ing with an NGO and con­tin­ued for six years. Around 25 years old, my ca­reer tran­si­tioned, and I be­gan do­ing more high-lev­el work on pol­i­cy, pro­gramme and in­ter­ven­tion de­sign, etc, and in that way, less work on the ground, in com­mu­ni­ties, with CSOs. Last year, I re­flect­ed on the joy I once had work­ing di­rect­ly with ben­e­fi­cia­ries in com­mu­ni­ties and prayed that as I en­ter 2023, an op­por­tu­ni­ty would align in the sea of op­por­tu­ni­ties to al­low me to spend more time work­ing di­rect­ly on the ground.

“Un­ex­pect­ed­ly and to my ab­solute sur­prise, I was head­hunt­ed to work as a key ex­pert on the EU-Sus­tain­able Waste Pro­gramme in Tu­valu, the most re­mote, small­est and one of the world’s most vul­ner­a­ble is­lands. God tru­ly has a way of an­swer­ing prayers be­yond what we could ever dream of or imag­ine. The Tu­valu ex­pe­ri­ence, be­ing there, work­ing with CSOs, gov­ern­ment and com­mu­ni­ty coun­cils, was a per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al trans­for­ma­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence and one that I will cher­ish for a long time to come.”

Me­dia shaped her pas­sion for in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions

“Both my fa­ther cur­rent­ly and my grand­fa­ther, be­fore he re­tired, work/worked for Guardian Me­dia. My grand­pa, up un­til I was in uni­ver­si­ty, and my fa­ther, I think, since I was about two years old till now, has been work­ing at Guardian Me­dia. In my ear­ly years in pri­ma­ry school, St Cather­ine’s Pri­vate School on Pem­broke Street, be­fore school and in the af­ter­noon while I would await my fa­ther or my ride to go home at Guardian Me­dia. Pass­ing through the press room, see­ing jour­nal­ists and every­one at their desk, wit­ness­ing how a me­dia house runs, but more im­por­tant­ly, every morn­ing I start­ed off my day with the longer ver­sion print news­pa­pers, the length of my hand.

“It was those ex­pe­ri­ences that in­spired my love for news, pol­i­tics and in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs. I would have feisty de­bates as a lit­tle tod­dler still in pri­ma­ry school, de­bat­ing my grand­pa’s col­leagues about dif­fer­ent things in the news and pol­i­tics and so forth. Be­ing in that space re­al­ly honed my pas­sion for me­dia, pol­i­tics and in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs; hence my first de­gree was in jour­nal­ism and pub­lic re­la­tions, and my for­ev­er love is sto­ry­telling and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions.”

Fam­i­ly and faith are the cor­ner­stones

Dove shared that var­i­ous peo­ple have in­flu­enced and im­pact­ed her jour­ney. “My growth, suc­cess and de­vel­op­ment didn’t hap­pen by chance or on my own ac­cord. My first men­tor was An­der­son Fi­garo, I be­gan vol­un­teer­ing with his NGO at 16, an ex­pe­ri­ence that led me to re­alise my call­ing in the de­vel­op­ment sec­tor. Since my teenage years, I have been priv­i­leged and blessed to be men­tored by some great lead­ers and el­ders in­clud­ing Ver­na St Rose Greaves, Lisa Wick­ham, Abi­gail Ajim, Brady Rhodes, Michael Don­ahue, Wendy Tal­ley, and three great men now de­ceased, William Latch­man, Wayne Chance and most re­cent­ly passed in Ju­ly 2023, Dr Hen­ry Wal­lace Charles.

“These peo­ple are in large part re­spon­si­ble for hon­ing my skills, pas­sion and work eth­ic. My com­mu­ni­ty has car­ried me on their backs, sur­round­ed me with their love, pro­vid­ed me with a safe space and a sound­ing board in times of de­spair and strug­gle, val­ue and cel­e­brate me with em­pow­er­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion, grat­i­tude and love when I need it the most.”

How­ev­er, her 108-year-old great-grand­moth­er con­tin­ues to be one of her great­est in­flu­ences. “Much of my child­hood was spent with my great-grand­moth­er, Louisa Doris Alexan­dra Al­leyne-Bruce. Her great­est in­flu­ence on my life was her faith and prayer life. Every­thing that I learned, my so­cial­i­sa­tion, my ap­proach, and my think­ing was in­flu­enced by her. My time out­side of school as a child was spent with her. Go­ing along­side her to vis­it her friends on an af­ter­noon or week­end, hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions about pol­i­tics and life, so much of my so­cial­i­sa­tion and un­der­stand­ing of the world and life dy­nam­ics were in­flu­enced by her. I dare say it is her prayers that car­ry me and pro­tect me to this very day! Be­cause of them all, I AM.”

Mak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence

Tak­ing a nec­es­sary pause was life-chang­ing, as Dove feels aligned to her life’s pur­pose and on a jour­ney where she is pri­ori­tis­ing her health, her joy and ful­fil­ment. “What has kept me is God’s grace, seek­ing him and ask­ing him al­ways to place me where he sees fit, to ful­fil his will and where I can be of most val­ue. Be­yond that, I am a sim­ple hu­man. I try, some­times I fail, most times I suc­ceed. What­ev­er the jour­ney, I keep at it, I ex­plore all op­por­tu­ni­ties, and I pur­sue every sin­gle thing my heart de­sires to at­tempt or achieve. It gets over­whelm­ing at times, but my goal is that when I leave this earth, I would have giv­en this jour­ney of life my all, and would have served and con­tributed to mak­ing spaces bet­ter!”