The path Dr Cle-Anne Gabriel has fol­lowed was large­ly un­planned, but her pas­sion has pushed her for­ward and giv­en her great pur­pose.

“I stud­ied sus­tain­abil­i­ty. In high school, I did ge­og­ra­phy and en­vi­ron­men­tal stud­ies. My bach­e­lor’s de­gree was in Ge­og­ra­phy and En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment at UWI (St Au­gus­tine). I just kept study­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty but from the per­spec­tive of dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines, so I start­ed off with a sci­ence de­gree in sus­tain­abil­i­ty then I did two mas­ters, one in pol­i­cy around sus­tain­abil­i­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment and one in en­gi­neer­ing for sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Then I got a doc­tor­ate in the busi­ness to know any­thing to do with sus­tain­able-busi­ness mod­els and how busi­ness­es are try­ing to achieve sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment goals,” Gabriel told the Busi­ness Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

Her stud­ies saw her leave Trinidad and ad­vance her learn­ing in Cana­da, Japan, Ger­many and New Zealand.

“None of the steps I took in my life were ac­tu­al­ly sort of planned in ad­vance. I just go where life takes me, hon­est­ly. I was liv­ing in New Zealand at the time. I lived there for five years. I did my PhD in New Zealand. I was do­ing an aca­d­e­m­ic role when a job came up at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land here in Aus­tralia,” said the Bish­op Anstey High School Port-of-Spain alum­na, who grew up in Ma­yaro.

“I ap­plied for a job that looked in­ter­est­ing, went through the in­ter­view process, got the job, they re­lo­cat­ed me, and that’s how I came to Aus­tralia for work.”

Now, 16 years on from her aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suits and study of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, she has be­come a ma­jor fig­ure in the push for car­bon lit­er­a­cy in Aus­tralia, where she cur­rent­ly re­sides and is now see­ing to push her cours­es world­wide through her com­pa­ny ThinkZe­ro.

But what is car­bon lit­er­a­cy ex­act­ly?

“Car­bon lit­er­a­cy just means fun­da­men­tal knowl­edge. This is the ba­sic knowl­edge you need in or­der to re­al­ly un­der­stand what we mean when we talk about cli­mate change, car­bon off­sets, car­bon pric­ing, all stuff net ze­ro. Some peo­ple, I have to say, at first are a bit ap­pre­hen­sive and even find it a lit­tle bit in­sult­ing be­cause the word lit­er­a­cy can be can seen as a lit­tle bit de­mean­ing to peo­ple. Es­pe­cial­ly for se­nior ex­ec­u­tives who are at the top end of their ca­reers to have to be of­fered a course in any kind of lit­er­a­cy,” said Gabriel.

The idea for ThinkZe­ro, she ex­plained, came as she stepped away from the pure­ly sci­en­tif­ic as­pect of her aca­d­e­m­ic fo­cus and in­stead adopt­ed new per­spec­tives through busi­ness school.

“I guess learn­ing busi­ness was a lit­tle bit of a wake-up call ex­pe­ri­ence for me to re­alise that ac­tu­al­ly it’s one thing to know the sci­ence of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and it’s one thing to have an un­der­stand­ing of the tech­ni­cal so­lu­tions we need. But if we don’t con­vince the peo­ple who have the pow­er and the mon­ey to ac­tu­al­ly make change hap­pen, if we can com­mu­ni­cate ef­fec­tive­ly for them and build so­lu­tions for them, mean­ing pri­vate sec­tor busi­ness­es, then we’re not ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to see any larg­er shifts and changes in sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” said Gabriel, who de­vel­oped this new un­der­stand­ing while at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land.

It was then ThinkZe­ro was catal­ysed. The Queens­land-based prof­it-for-pur­pose busi­ness pro­vides sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­sult­ing as well as learn­ing and de­vel­op­ment ser­vices.

The com­pa­ny’s fo­cus is to in­spire or­gan­i­sa­tions to un­der­stand the im­pli­ca­tions of cli­mate change through an in­tro­duc­tion to the lan­guage of de­car­bon­i­sa­tion, as well as more ad­vanced tools, ad­vice and so­lu­tions to sup­port or­gan­i­sa­tions on their low-car­bon jour­neys.

“I think, com­pared to some oth­ers that I’ve worked with or stud­ied with, through­out my ca­reer in sus­tain­abil­i­ty who have stayed true to pure sci­ence ca­reers or pure pol­i­cy ca­reers, I de­cid­ed that I want­ed to do the re­al­ly dif­fi­cult thing of try­ing to speak to busi­ness peo­ple, and so I spent a lot of time in uni­ver­si­ty busi­ness schools talk­ing to small and large busi­ness­es about their busi­ness mod­els for sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” she said.

As her rep­u­ta­tion grew, ma­jor cor­po­ra­tions came call­ing. Dr. Gabriel and her com­pa­ny of­fered sus­tain­abil­i­ty and de­car­bon­i­sa­tion projects in four OECD coun­tries, in­clud­ing low-and ze­ro-emis­sion tran­si­tion pro­grammes for the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion, Au­sAID and the World Bank, two na­tion­al gov­ern­ments and mul­ti-na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. She has al­so pro­vid­ed ad­vice on re­gion­al-lev­el pol­i­cy and plan­ning in Japan, the Eu­ro­pean Union, and New Zealand. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she served as head of de­car­bon­i­sa­tion glob­al­ly for RPM Glob­al, then head of de­car­bon­i­sa­tion at KP­MG, be­fore re­cent­ly de­cid­ing to fo­cus on ThinkZe­ro full-time.

Gabriel’s ef­forts saw her named Aus­tralian Glob­al Tal­ent of the Year last year. That came as a sur­prise to her.

“I came from an­oth­er coun­try, so to win the award for the 2023 Aus­tralian Glob­al Tal­ent of the Year, I was sur­prised. It def­i­nite­ly was not some­thing I planned or ever imag­ined, to be hon­est. I’d ac­tu­al­ly hadn’t even imag­ined I’d be liv­ing in Aus­tralia. Some­body else nom­i­nat­ed me for this award. I didn’t even know that they did that, “ she said, “I just got an email one day say­ing that I’ve been short­list­ed and I’m one of the fi­nal­ists for this award, which was a com­plete shock. Then I won on the day.”

While her re­sume and achieve­ments are im­pres­sive, the moth­er of one has stressed that she has seen her share of chal­lenges.

“It’s been a re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing jour­ney. Be­cause it hasn’t been easy, and it’s dif­fi­cult com­ing from a dif­fer­ent coun­try. Al­so as a black woman in a for­eign coun­try, it’s just been re­al­ly chal­leng­ing try­ing to make my way and make your own make my mark in my field,” said Gabriel.

As a self de­scribed “chron­ic mul­ti­tasker” the Aus­tralia-based Trinidad na­tion­al said she viewed work-life bal­ance as more of a myth. In­stead, she has a dif­fer­ent mantra in terms of jug­gling her re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“It’s like it’s more of a rhythm than a bal­ance as it’s not at any one point in time. I don’t think I’m jug­gling every­thing and do­ing every­thing well. I am choos­ing the times when I am all in with my son and then I’m choos­ing the times I’m all in with my ca­reer,” said Gabriel, who ex­plained that while most may look at her suc­cess, she too has had her fair share of strug­gle and ad­just­ment to make things work.

“I think in our life we go through sea­sons. And we go through them on a day-to-day ba­sis and right now I’m in the sea­son. My son is nine and a half. He’s ob­vi­ous­ly not an adult yet.

“So I’m in this sea­son of par­ent­ing un­til he’s an adult and he can look af­ter him­self on a day-to-day ba­sis. Like to­day. I spend a lot of time with him watch­ing movies, and do­ing things that he en­joys. And then when he’s in bed, now I’m all in work,” she said.

De­spite her achieve­ments down un­der, Gabriel is very much in­ter­est­ed in push­ing her mes­sage of car­bon lit­er­a­cy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the Caribbean and is hop­ing that home will be her base in the West­ern Hemi­sphere af­ter cur­rent plans to ex­pand ThinkZe­ro’s op­er­a­tions in the Mid­dle East.

“I would like to take things over to the Caribbean, ob­vi­ous­ly start­ing with Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­cause that’s home,” said Dr Gabriel, “I just got a big cor­po­rate part­ner in the Mid­dle East, so ThinkZe­ro will soon be launch­ing in the Mid­dle East to de­liv­er the ThinkZe­ro cours­es there. So I would love to have a Caribbean base or a Trinidad and To­ba­go based de­liv­ery part­ner for the ThinkZe­ro car­bon lit­er­a­cy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty cours­es.”

Gabriel said she cur­rent­ly look­ing at op­tions to es­tab­lish ThinkZe­ro in the Caribbean.