Gillian Cal­iste

To be the first 50-year-old In­do-Caribbean mod­el to walk the run­way at the Lon­don or Paris Fash­ion Week! Trinidad-born mod­el and fit­ness in­struc­tor Na­dia Neu­bert shared her medi­um-term goal with Sun­day Guardian re­cent­ly and with the im­pres­sive list of ac­com­plish­ments al­ready un­der her belt, her words are easy to be­lieve.

Orig­i­nal­ly an Arim­i­an who mi­grat­ed to the US with her par­ents and two of her three sib­lings when she was 17, Neu­bert has made a name for her­self and her coun­try of birth in mod­el­ling, dance and cul­ture, over the years. Hav­ing start­ed clas­si­cal In­di­an dance at the age of nine at the Nrityan­jali Dance The­atre, Trinci­ty, she won sev­er­al dance com­pe­ti­tions dur­ing her school years in T&T and made ap­pear­ances with her dance troupe at var­i­ous is­lands in the re­gion.

Neu­bert con­tin­ued in dance af­ter her fam­i­ly moved to New York, build­ing her con­fi­dence and blos­som­ing from a shy teen. Since 2017 she has cap­tured nu­mer­ous pageant ti­tles and mod­elled in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for var­i­ous fash­ion brands.

For the moth­er of four chil­dren who range in age from eight to 19, the sad pass­ing in 2010 of her 12-year-old son Ar­jun, who had been ail­ing and had un­der­gone surgery, would pro­pel her to step out, em­brace life and pur­sue her dreams.

Nadia Neubert

Bob Sax

Al­ready fea­tured at the At­lantic City and Philadel­phia Fash­ion Weeks, and hav­ing act­ed as run­way man­ag­er and host for At­lantic City Fash­ion Week and the show host for New York City Cou­ture Week with Aris­to­crat TV, Neu­bert will ap­pear on the cat­walk at New York Fash­ion Week which kicks off from Sep­tem­ber 9.

“I al­ways have goals. Like I said, be­cause I went through what I did with my son and be­cause life is short—we’ve lost a lot of peo­ple due to COVID—I don’t think in terms of the next five years. I try to bite off six months, the next three months, so my goal was to walk at New York Fash­ion Week and that’s ac­tu­al­ly hap­pen­ing in a cou­ple of weeks. My next goal is to walk in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in Paris or Lon­don and take those run­ways.

“I want to be the first 50-year-old In­do-Caribbean per­son to do that,” Neu­bert told Sun­day Guardian.

It was Neu­bert’s win at the 2017 Mrs Bol­ly­wood USA where she was the on­ly In­do-Caribbean rep­re­sen­ta­tive among 70 can­di­dates from In­dia that launched her mod­el­ling ca­reer. She start­ed do­ing fash­ion and cat­a­logue mod­el­ling and fash­ion am­bas­sado­r­i­al roles and would go on to rack up a host of oth­er ti­tles in­clud­ing the Mrs South Asia In­ter­na­tion­al 2018, SWAG Icon of In­di­an Sea­son 1, Miss Ul­ti­mate Di­a­mond 2021, and Mrs Caribbean Amer­i­can Tourism 2021 and 2022.

Along the way, Neu­bert en­rolled at a pro­fes­sion­al mod­el­ling school and hired a tal­ent agent. Her run­way ap­pear­ances, ed­i­to­r­i­al and cat­a­logue work for in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion brands and mag­a­zines like UBM and Swanky have been nu­mer­ous. She has been pub­lished in mag­a­zines in Spain, France, Italy, Ger­many, Rus­sia, In­dia and Dubai, and is proud of do­ing her own make-up and hair for many ap­pear­ances.

Nadia Neubert

Karl Lee

As an In­di­an clas­si­cal dancer, she dances un­der the tute­lage of Gu­ru Dur­ga Cha­ran and Bani Ray and re­cent­ly Jy­oti Shri­vas­ta­va and is a dancer with Odis­si Dance Com­pa­ny in New York the Tri­nayan Col­lec­tive. She is al­so co-founder of a Bol­ly­wood dance group Ap­saras of South Jer­sey.

The ac­tive Neu­bert has ap­peared in mu­sic videos of en­ter­tain­ers like lo­cal so­ca and so­ca chut­ney vet­er­an Rik­ki Jai and Hin­di hip hop artist J Ma­lik, among oth­ers and has al­so done a bit of act­ing in tele­vi­sion ads.

Added to these, Neu­bert holds down a full-time job do­ing con­tract law at the Com­mon­wealth PA in Philadel­phia which en­tails prepar­ing con­tracts for the Gov­ern­ment and she al­so be­came a gym in­struc­tor spe­cial­is­ing in Zum­ba ten years ago. She com­bined T&T so­ca with Bol­ly­wood mu­sic to cre­ate her dance fit­ness brand Bol­lyTrin in 2015, tak­ing her spe­cial brand of fit­ness dance to var­i­ous gyms across Philadel­phia.

A fa­mil­iar face on news chan­nels in her city and on so­cial me­dia, Neu­bert is al­so a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Caribbean Al­liance Foun­da­tion of T&T and cul­tur­al am­bas­sador for At­lantic City Car­ni­val and has been ho­n­oured for her cul­tur­al con­tri­bu­tion to the city of Philadel­phia, but al­ways strives to ac­tive­ly pro­mote T&T.

“Every­where I go I rep­re­sent my is­land. I love Trinidad and To­ba­go. I am do­ing a lot of work in cul­ture and keep­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go rel­e­vant to where I am here in South Jer­sey, Philadel­phia,” she said.

 “As an in­di­vid­ual, you have a lot of tal­ents and you just don’t re­alise. I push my lim­its.

“I don’t have any­one that I copy and that’s the kind of ex­am­ple that I want to set.”

Nadia Neubert with her husband, Darium and children (clockwise) Sonia, Divya and Armaan.

Photo courtesy Nadia Neubert

She meets nu­mer­ous pub­lic fig­ures and per­son­al­i­ties in the fash­ion, cul­tur­al and busi­ness world like Bol­ly­wood stars and ac­tors who have ap­peared along­side Keanu Reeves in the movie John Wick. Two weeks ago, she rep­re­sent­ed T&T through dance at a flag-rais­ing cer­e­mo­ny at which the Con­sulate Gen­er­al for T&T in New York An­dre Laveau was present.

Neu­bert stress­es the im­por­tance of self-care, courage, de­ter­mi­na­tion, hard work and fam­i­ly sup­port in achiev­ing suc­cess. Just lucky enough to have vis­it­ed T&T and her broth­er Anand who works in IT just be­fore the pan­dem­ic start­ed, the third of her par­ents’ four chil­dren, she has al­ways cher­ished her na­tive land as a place of un­told beau­ty, tal­ent and uni­ty, but said she will wait un­til the pan­dem­ic has com­plete­ly sub­sided for her next vis­it.

Though her sis­ter Ria, a reg­is­tered nurse, lives in Mary­land, an­oth­er broth­er Anil, who owns a busi­ness, lives in Geor­gia, and her par­ents Clyde and Rad­hi­ka live near to her home which Nu­bert shares with her Ital­ian-Amer­i­can hus­band, Dar­i­um, in South Jer­sey just out­side Philadel­phia, her fam­i­ly gen­er­al­ly stays well-con­nect­ed.

To peo­ple from places like T&T, Grena­da, Ja­maica and oth­er parts of the Caribbean she en­coun­ters, who ask how she does it all, she sim­ply ad­vis­es to seek out tal­ents and pas­sions of your own and be your­self in ex­press­ing them.

The un­apolo­getic go-get­ter brings her con­fi­dence, unique Bol­lyTrim style and dili­gence to her fit­ness class­es where her old­est stu­dent is an 82-year-old male who has nev­er missed a class in six years. Many of her par­tic­i­pants are se­nior cit­i­zens who look for­ward to the com­mu­nion and joy of her class­es.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Neu­bert, who lives on a cul de sac, set up an au­dio sys­tem and had her com­mu­ni­ty ex­er­cis­ing on their doorsteps, while oth­ers from around the world par­tic­i­pat­ed vir­tu­al­ly. She is keen to keep fly­ing the T&T flag and build uni­fied ac­tive com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly among the Caribbean di­as­po­ra one step at a time, she said.

Nadia Neubert

Carl Fletcher

Q&A with Na­dia Neu­bert

Q What caused you to en­ter the Mrs Bol­ly­wood-South Asia com­pe­ti­tion in 2017?  Did you know you had a knack for mod­el­ling?

AI didn’t re­al­ly. I was very shy and grow­ing up in Trinidad and com­ing from a very shel­tered home, we weren’t out there as much and I be­came a mum. I had cre­at­ed my own trade­mark, Bol­lyTrim, a fu­sion of In­di­an Bol­ly­wood, so­ca, chut­ney and reg­gae-style mu­sic fit­ness. It’s very much like Zum­ba. I love my Tri­ni mu­sic, but in a Zum­ba class you have to mix it up, so I want­ed to cre­ate my own trade­mark and did my re­search.

I en­tered the pageant be­cause I want­ed to reach out to peo­ple my age out there who don’t feel com­fort­able in their skin but want to rep­re­sent their per­son­al­i­ties and them­selves as a whole. A lot of peo­ple when they get mar­ried, they’re ex­pect­ed to stay at home and take care of the kids, and that’s great, I do that too. But they have dreams, I feel we all have dreams. I didn’t feel I had any lim­it to my dreams, so I want­ed to have a plat­form. I re­al­ly want­ed to win and let peo­ple know who I am. Not on­ly am I rep­re­sent­ing the moth­er of to­day; a ca­reer woman, but I’m In­do-Trinida­di­an and I en­tered a pageant with 70 oth­er peo­ple from In­dia. I was the on­ly In­do-Caribbean per­son and I won. It took a lot of grit and courage to do that.

How did that first pageant win change, in­flu­ence you?

I didn’t have as much con­fi­dence as I do now. I’ve grown since then. Rep­re­sent­ing South Asia-USA gave me a voice. Peo­ple start­ed lis­ten­ing to me and I start­ed to im­prove on my­self, be­ing more knowl­edge­able about world events and about help­ing peo­ple in health and fit­ness and giv­ing back and en­cour­ag­ing com­mu­ni­ty. That’s what I’ve been do­ing ac­tu­al­ly for the past ten years; en­cour­ag­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

I have two girls at home and I work re­al­ly hard to teach them to be in­de­pen­dent and go for their goals be­cause I re­al­ly do feel that the world is out there and the on­ly per­son hold­ing us back is us. You think you can­not do it. I was one of them, and I did it and con­tin­ue to do it.

What has been the high­light of your mod­el­ling ca­reer?

It’s dif­fi­cult to an­swer be­cause, for me, there’ve been two as­pects of mod­el­ling: run­way and cat­a­logue or pub­lish­ing. What I re­mem­ber most is be­ing on the cov­er of my first mag­a­zine be­cause I’ve seen so many mag­a­zines and I nev­er thought I’d be on the cov­er of one. To ac­tu­al­ly go to a store and pick up a fash­ion mag­a­zine to buy it and there you are on the cov­er, that was pret­ty much shock­ing. I was frozen and I want­ed to cry be­cause I worked re­al­ly hard to get there. That was 2018 and the mag­a­zine was UBM. To­day, I’m on the cov­er of about 75 mag­a­zines.

Walk­ing at New York Fash­ion Week is an­oth­er high­light. Do you ever think you would walk in Fash­ion Week in Times Square?

That’s a huge ac­com­plish­ment for me. When I go to a cast­ing, I com­pete with 18-year-olds who are six feet tall and size ze­ro.

What do you think gives you the edge over them?

It’s my con­fi­dence and I have a re­al­ly good walk. I re­al­ly did in­vest a lot of time in my walk. And when you’re on that run­way, you’ve got to slay it. You have to own the run­way and have that pres­ence.

And you use these qual­i­ties for your Zum­ba class­es as well? What do you teach your stu­dents?

There is a class that I teach on Wednes­days where one of my par­tic­i­pants is 82. It’s a guy and he’s from In­dia and he has nev­er missed a class in six years. He want­ed to just be fit and there are a lot of peo­ple here in New Jer­sey, es­pe­cial­ly in the In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty who don’t like to go to the gym, very mod­est peo­ple. So I went to them and be­cause I brought it to them, they kept mov­ing. If you see this guy, he dances through the whole class, with so much en­er­gy, he does not stop. He tells me what he does in class helps with his mo­bil­i­ty and helps his arthri­tis and di­a­betes. It helps him feel bet­ter. He’s not on all the med­ica­tions he used to take. There are a lot of se­nior cit­i­zens in my class. I learn their names, their kids’ names. I get in­volved and I’m very charis­mat­ic when I teach. The mu­sic is fun. When I ap­proach a class, it’s re­al­ly to keep this com­mu­ni­ty mov­ing and to­geth­er. Fit­ness is to­geth­er­ness, fit­ness is com­mu­ni­ty. We help each oth­er and I re­al­ly try to reach out more to Caribbean peo­ple.

Tell me more about the role your fam­i­ly plays in your suc­cess and any­one you wish to thank.

Fam­i­ly is im­por­tant and I achieve a lot of what I am and who I am be­cause of my fam­i­ly. I have en­tered four pageants, and I’ve won four. My mum and dad nev­er missed one. There were al­ways there for me. My hus­band is like my rock. If you’re mar­ried and you want to achieve your dreams, you have to have a spouse who’s there to sup­port you, es­pe­cial­ly when you have chil­dren. If I’m out work­ing, he’s go­ing to take care of the kids, I don’t have to stress and wor­ry. He’s there. The kids are amaz­ing. They al­ways sup­port me.

You have in­ter­act­ed with so many peo­ple of so many dif­fer­ent back­grounds, seek­ing to pro­mote Trinidad and To­ba­go. What sort of things do you tell them about T&T?

I am al­ways rep­re­sent­ing my cul­ture, I’m al­ways rep­re­sent­ing where I’m from. That’s im­por­tant to me; stay­ing true to who I am. I’m very hap­py and proud to be Trinida­di­an. I tell them well, the food is amaz­ing, the peo­ple are beau­ti­ful. We are so well-man­nered for the most part when I lived there. We are very am­bi­tious, we have so many great writ­ers, our stu­dents, our steel­pan, how beau­ti­ful the place is, Richard’s bake and shark, the cul­ture, the mu­sic, the uni­ty we had, es­pe­cial­ly when I was grow­ing up. I hope it’s still the same. I boast about the unit we have, even in our food. Every­body can cook cur­ry, bake and salt­fish. We can just sit at Christ­mas and have black cake and sor­rel and just lime. We are a hap­py peo­ple. We have a lot to boast about.

Is there any­thing you wish to say to T&T on our 60th an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence?

I just want to say I’m very proud to be Trinida­di­an. I’m hap­py to cel­e­brate that and keep mak­ing that lega­cy here in Philadel­phia, New Jer­sey. Hap­py 60th!