The fu­ture is fe­male.

The slo­gan has its roots in 1970s New York City, but the re­al­i­ty is cur­rent­ly be­ing seen around the world and on our shores.

Last week, the Pub­lic Sec­tor Fo­rum was held at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um in Port-of-Spain. It was host­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions Glob­al Com­pact Net­work for the Caribbean in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Guardian Group, MD Med­ical Con­sul­tan­cy Ltd, Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, with the theme “Ac­cel­er­at­ing Growth Through Sus­tain­able Busi­ness”

The PSF is a high-lev­el re­gion­al gath­er­ing that brings to­geth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives from gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies with as­so­ci­a­tions and of­fi­cials from Unit­ed Na­tions agen­cies, funds and pro­grammes work­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go to dis­cuss poli­cies, reg­u­la­to­ry re­form, and long-term plan­ning in cre­at­ing en­abling en­vi­ron­ments for pri­vate-sec­tor in­vest­ment to achieve the UN Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) so­lu­tions.

A pan­el dis­cus­sion was held at the event, which fo­cused on po­ten­tial strate­gies to achieve those goals.

Four of the five pan­el­lists were fe­male.

In re­al time, the ideas shared be­tween and among the pan­el­lists as­sessed new av­enues for the bet­ter­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. In re­sponse to re­marks from Aisha Don­ald­son, se­nior de­vel­op­ment plan­ner of the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion(TCPD), Guardian Group Vice Pres­i­dent ESG Shinelle Grant–Sealey ex­plained the po­ten­tial for a cru­cial pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship based on da­ta shar­ing.

“There are so many op­por­tu­ni­ties for us to be able to part­ner and add val­ue on both sides, both from the pub­lic sec­tor ben­e­fit­ting from the pri­vate sec­tor and vice ver­sa,” said Grant-Sealey.

“Just as you were speak­ing, I was get­ting a lit­tle bit ex­cit­ed, be­cause I’m think­ing, Okay, I could go back to Aisha and Ian (Chi­napoo) and peo­ple in my team to say we need to be speak­ing with TCPD. We’re in the busi­ness of in­sur­ance. We’re in the busi­ness of flood risk. We’re in the busi­ness of pay­ing out poli­cies when floods hap­pen, and we need to be able to mit­i­gate those risks. You are telling me you have the da­ta that we need, po­ten­tial­ly to have bet­ter plan?” Grant-Sealey asked.

She ex­plained fur­ther that the da­ta col­lect­ed from the var­i­ous claims, com­bined with the var­i­ous maps that would be avail­able to TCPD, should al­low for ben­e­fi­cial plans not just for the com­pa­ny but to re­duce po­ten­tial dam­age and loss­es for the wider pub­lic.

“I think the biggest op­por­tu­ni­ty lies in da­ta shar­ing. I’m speak­ing from the in­sur­ance sec­tor, be­cause there’s so many op­por­tu­ni­ties that we can talk about, pol­i­cy in­form­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy, Grant–Sealey said.

“We could speak about dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness, we could speak about eco­nom­ic re­silience, like you just men­tioned. But if we think about it from a ur­ban plan­ning point of view,” she said, “we have a lot of da­ta across the sec­tor as it re­lates to ag­gre­gat­ed risk, in terms of loss pay­outs, flood risk, flood claims. You, on the oth­er hand, have ac­cess to map­ping. So tra­di­tion­al­ly, what we do in in­sur­ance is we do cat­a­stro­phe mod­el­ling that helps us in terms of rein­sur­ance. It helps us in terms of pric­ing. It looks at past events and the like­li­hood of those events hap­pen­ing in the near fu­ture. What we’re now tran­si­tion­ing in­to is cli­mate risk and cli­mate-sce­nario mod­el­ling, and that looks at fu­ture pro­jec­tions.”

The oth­er mem­bers of the PSF pan­el were Wen­dell Ra­moutar, part­ner/ESG and Net­Ze­ro Leader at PwC Trinidad and To­ba­go; UNIPET’s Ria Sook­nar­ine, sus­tain­abil­i­ty man­ag­er and Na­tal­ie Bib­by, cor­po­rate sus­tain­abil­i­ty spe­cial­ist at the ANSA McAL Group. The pan­el was mod­er­at­ed by HAR­CON Con­sult­ing’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Er­math Har­ring­ton.

Grant-Sealey played a cru­cial role in get­ting the Guardian Group to be­come the lat­est mem­ber of the UN Glob­al Com­pact, the world’s largest cor­po­rate sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tive. The com­pa­ny’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the PSF served as a com­mem­o­ra­tion of its mem­ber­ship.

In his fea­ture ad­dress at the event, Ian Chi­napoo ac­knowl­edged his VP’s work in the ini­tia­tive as he em­pha­sised the grow­ing im­por­tance of En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial, and Gov­er­nance poli­cies for com­pa­nies.

“Com­pet­i­tive­ness to­day is no longer de­fined sole­ly by scale or speed. It’s de­fined by re­silience, gov­er­nance and cred­i­bil­i­ty. His­to­ry has shown us clear­ly what hap­pens when these foun­da­tions fail: En­ron erased bil­lions in share­hold­er val­ue and pen­sions. Lehman Broth­ers trig­gered a glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis that re­shaped the en­tire fi­nan­cial sys­tem; Volk­swa­gen lost over €30 bil­lion in mar­ket val­ue af­ter its emis­sions scan­dal; Wells Far­go paid bil­lions in penal­ties af­ter gov­er­nance fail­ures erod­ed trust,” said Chi­napoo.

Ramps Lo­gis­tics women

How­ev­er, the Guardian Group was not the on­ly com­pa­ny cel­e­brat­ing mile­stones from women-led ini­tia­tives.

Last week, lo­gis­tics com­pa­ny Ramps Lo­gis­tics earned a 2026 Sil­ver Amer­i­can Ad­ver­tis­ing Award (AD­DY) for its Cub­by Car­go cam­paign, win­ning in the Spe­cial­ty Ad­ver­tis­ing Cam­paign cat­e­go­ry.

The cam­paign, built to pro­mote Cub­by Car­go its dig­i­tal-first freight book­ing plat­form built for the Caribbean, had been dri­ven by women in the com­pa­ny.

Kadelia Achille, com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er at Ramps Lo­gis­tics, heaped praise on the Ramps Lo­gis­tics cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions team: Rae-Anne Richard­son, se­nior mar­ket­ing strate­gist; Saman­tha Lee, se­nior graph­ic de­sign spe­cial­ist; Fi­ad Baksh, se­nior event and mar­ket­ing co­or­di­na­tor; and Ste­fan Mc­Carthy, se­nior vi­su­al me­dia co­or­di­na­tor, who spear­head­ed the cam­paign, which was ex­e­cut­ed ful­ly in-house.

“This recog­ni­tion is a defin­ing mo­ment for our team. To en­ter this space in our first year and come away with a Sil­ver AD­DY is in­cred­i­bly mean­ing­ful. We have al­ways be­lieved that in-house teams can pro­duce work that is not on­ly com­pet­i­tive, but cat­e­go­ry-shap­ing,” Achille said.

Shiv­ana Loach, re­gion­al head of trade lanes at Cub­by Car­go, told the Busi­ness Guardian that she con­tin­ued to be heart­ened by the pos­i­tive re­cep­tion the tech­nol­o­gy had re­ceived since it was un­veiled last year.

“A lot of peo­ple re­al­ly, re­al­ly like what we have to of­fer. I mean, what re­al­ly came down to it was mak­ing so­lu­tions, pro­vid­ing so­lu­tions that makes it ac­ces­si­ble to every­one. So we have a very fun, ex­cit­ing women team that is run­ning this en­tire plat­form right now, and they re­al­ly like work­ing there, and it pro­vides a so­lu­tion for our cus­tomers that did not ex­ist be­fore. So they have re­al­ly bought in­to it,” said Loach, who ad­mit­ted the AI so­lu­tion was met with scep­ti­cism at first, but Loach felt cus­tomers had warmed up to the tech­nol­o­gy.