Car­ol Quash

For years Michelle Low Chew Tung has worked with Caribbean MSMEs to help strength­en their com­pet­i­tive­ness and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for them to en­ter re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Now, as pres­i­dent of The Caribbean Women in Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CWIT), she is com­mit­ted to stay­ing true to the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s mis­sion – to fos­ter a com­mu­ni­ty that sup­ports the ad­vance­ment of Caribbean women in in­ter­na­tion­al trade – and to us­ing the plat­form to con­tin­ue the work to which she has ded­i­cat­ed over two decades of her life.

CWIT was launched in 2023. It spans 17 coun­tries across the re­gion with over 180 mem­bers, in­clud­ing CEOs, en­tre­pre­neurs, trade of­fi­cials, le­gal and pol­i­cy ad­vi­sors and stu­dents. Its ob­jec­tive is to of­fer mem­bers greater ac­cess to knowl­edge, ex­per­tise, vis­i­bil­i­ty, and op­por­tu­ni­ties to con­nect with mar­kets and with po­ten­tial part­ners.

Low Chew Tung is a pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ment spe­cial­ist, cer­ti­fied ex­ec­u­tive coach, and founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of In­veni Busi­ness and Tech­nol­o­gy Ltd. She has ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in trade com­pet­i­tive­ness, ex­port strat­e­gy and glob­al sup­ply chain de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing sup­port­ing Caribbean busi­ness­es with sup­pli­er en­gage­ment, sourc­ing strat­e­gy, and qual­i­ty as­sur­ance across Chi­na and four Asian coun­tries.

“My fo­cus re­al­ly is on en­sur­ing that CWIT as a plat­form, is more than net­work­ing. Yes, it al­lows our women to con­nect, but it’s more than that.”

Low Chew Tung told Busi­ness Guardian CWIT fo­cuss­es main­ly on two seg­ments –women who work in in­ter­na­tion­al trade at the pro­fes­sion­al lev­el, and women in in­ter­na­tion­al trade at the busi­ness lev­el. She is the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s third pres­i­dent, hav­ing been elect­ed dur­ing the AGM in May, and as­sum­ing of­fice with the new board on Ju­ly 7.

“We are pret­ty di­verse, not just in terms of skill, but al­so in terms of where we are lo­cat­ed in the re­gion. For in­stance, the for­mer pres­i­dent is Ja­maican; an in­ter­na­tion­al trade lawyer based in the US. And we have oth­er an­oth­er board mem­ber in Gene­va, Switzer­land, at the World In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion and so on.”

She said while net­work­ing takes place in the ini­tial stages, it is what hap­pens af­ter that net­work­ing that re­al­ly mat­ters.

“Was she able to ac­cess a new mar­ket for her prod­uct? Was she able to gain greater in­sight in terms of what’s hap­pen­ing in the in­ter­na­tion­al trade en­vi­ron­ment? Net­work­ing is on­ly part of it, but we want to be able to im­pact our women who are in­volved in in­ter­na­tion­al trade through men­tor­ship; through en­sur­ing that they’re able to at­tract tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance for the work that they are do­ing; they are able to ac­cess new mar­kets. And if they are look­ing for a new buy­er, are they able to find that buy­er?”

Low Chew Tung de­scribed the cri­te­ria for mem­ber­ship as sim­ple. A woman who is in­volved in busi­ness, or an en­tre­pre­neur.

“You can join the or­gan­i­sa­tion be­cause you prob­a­bly were look­ing for in­creased reach for your prod­ucts or ser­vices, or you just want men­tor­ship, or any type of de­vel­op­ment, to grow your busi­ness. And if you are a pro­fes­sion­al in in­ter­na­tion­al trade, you are able to ac­cess in­for­ma­tion be­cause we do quite a bit of work in terms of trade pol­i­cy as well.”

She has been on the CWIT board for the past two years, and has had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see the or­gan­i­sa­tion from the in­side and un­der­stand its po­ten­tial and the com­mit­ment to the peo­ple who have built it. As pres­i­dent, she brings to the ta­ble her ex­pe­ri­ence in trade, busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

“So we have more women across the re­gion build­ing busi­ness­es, pro­vid­ing pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, and en­ter­ing in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. We want to make them con­nect, and I want to make sure they can turn these con­nec­tions in­to re­al op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

CWIT has five com­mit­tees – men­tor­ing, mem­ber­ship, trade pol­i­cy, ac­cess to fi­nance and busi­ness and in­no­va­tion – through which it works for mem­bers. These com­mit­tees, Low Chew Tung ex­plained, host a se­ries of events that pro­vide learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for mem­bers.

“For in­stance, our trade and pol­i­cy com­mit­tee, we have launched a se­ries of trade round­table dis­cus­sions that hap­pen every quar­ter. We just com­plet­ed one in Ju­ly, which brought in­for­ma­tion and part­ners to our mem­bers on the Africa-Caribbean trade con­nec­tion and what that could mean to their busi­ness­es from a val­ue per­spec­tive.”

CWIT al­so of­fers as­sis­tance with ac­cess to fi­nance, which is a huge is­sue for women in trade.

“We have fo­rums that are planned and a se­ries of we­bi­na­rs to help women im­prove their skillset as it per­tains to ex­ports and ex­port growth as well. And lots of in­for­ma­tion is shared in terms of fi­nance op­por­tu­ni­ties that are avail­able across the re­gion and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly that our women could ac­tu­al­ly ap­ply and get fi­nanc­ing for. And we are al­so sup­port­ing them with our tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty as well.”

Low Chew Tung said be­cause she has been work­ing di­rect­ly with so many MSMEs, she un­der­stands the re­al­i­ties busi­ness­es face when they’re try­ing to grow, and try­ing to en­ter new mar­kets. She said a lot of Caribbean women in trade be­lieve they won’t have a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties in their lo­cal and re­gion­al mar­kets.

“I think that’s a myth, be­cause our Caribbean women, we have the ex­per­tise, we have the prod­ucts, we have the ser­vices. We have the cre­ativ­i­ty and the knowl­edge that can com­pete far be­yond our bor­ders. But we don’t have to fig­ure every­thing out alone or even try and fig­ure it out in­di­vid­u­al­ly.”

She en­cour­ages women in busi­ness to look be­yond their do­mes­tic mar­ket.

“I hope that CWIT can con­tin­ue to fa­cil­i­tate help­ing women re­alise that there are op­por­tu­ni­ties be­yond what they can see from where they are, and see a con­nec­tor – a role that we can play in re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion. Be­cause, at the end of the day, we talk a lot about re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, but in­te­gra­tion isn’t on­ly about gov­ern­ments and trade agree­ments. It al­so hap­pens when busi­ness­es ac­tu­al­ly trade with each oth­er. When our en­tre­pre­neurs col­lab­o­rate across bor­ders and when peo­ple have re­la­tion­ships that al­low them to iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

She said be­cause CWIT has women op­er­at­ing in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, dif­fer­ent in­dus­tries, dif­fer­ent stages of busi­ness, there is enor­mous po­ten­tial in that net­work.

“And I would like to see us con­tin­u­ing to cre­ate con­di­tions for those re­la­tion­ships to be­come more prac­ti­cal busi­ness con­nec­tions for our women in trade across the re­gion, be­cause ul­ti­mate­ly, re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion has to mean some­thing to the busi­ness own­er. It has to trans­late in­to op­por­tu­ni­ties to sell, to col­lab­o­rate, to source, to part­ner and to grow.”