Soyi­ni Grey

Soyi­ni Grey is a mul­ti-me­dia jour­nal­ist who has worked and stud­ied in T&T, Ja­maica, the Unit­ed King­dom and Ecuador.

She be­lieves in the need for strong cul­tur­al and in­tra-re­gion­al jour­nal­ism. She got her start at Caribbean New Me­dia Group (now TTT), mov­ing to teleSUR Eng­lish be­fore set­tling at Guardian Me­dia Ltd. Her pro­fes­sion­al jour­ney here has her fo­cus­ing more on news pro­duc­tion, in­clud­ing hav­ing done spe­cials on men­tal health and Do­mini­ca’s World Cre­ole Mu­sic Fes­ti­val. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, she serves as the stand-in for Ja­son Williams as host of The Morn­ing Brew on CNC3.

She vows to vis­it the beach more reg­u­lar­ly and lists Car­ni­val as her favourite time of the year.

AKASH SAMAROO

Akash Sama­roo

I’ll nev­er for­get Christ­mas Day, 2013. Not be­cause of any spe­cial gift un­der my tree but if you hap­pened to have had your tele­vi­sion on CNC3 for the 7 pm News, you’d have seen a messy-haired, ner­vous 23-year-old, de­void of any fa­cial hair, blink­ing pro­fuse­ly back at you while try­ing to get through his maid­en prime time news­cast dis­as­ter free.

Ten years on, I have had the priv­i­lege of us­ing that very same an­chor desk to do the one thing I be­lieve jour­nal­ism ex­ists for, to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for the peo­ple we serve. It is where I chal­lenged de­ci­sion-mak­ers, ad­vo­cat­ed for hu­man rights, and at times put a smile on your face. It is where my wife said she first saw me and then mes­saged me on Face­book (she’d say I mes­saged her).

This com­pa­ny gave me a chance to make a dif­fer­ence. It al­lowed me to con­quer my fears and be­come the best ver­sion of my­self.

Be­ing a part of its his­to­ry is an ho­n­our.

Jesse Ramdeo

Jesse Ramdeo

Jesse Ramdeo has been a se­nior broad­cast jour­nal­ist for a decade.

Born and raised in the south west­ern bor­ough of Point Fortin, Jesse cred­its his hum­ble and dis­ci­plined up­bring­ing for shap­ing his ca­reer in jour­nal­ism. Jesse has cov­ered a wide range of na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al events, rang­ing from pol­i­tics to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and hu­man-in­ter­est sto­ries.

He has risen through the ranks and has ex­hib­it­ed a com­mit­ment to de­liv­er­ing ac­cu­rate re­port­ing and in­sight­ful news. Over the years at CNC3, Jesse has host­ed the sta­tion’s prime morn­ing show and an­chored the mid­day and ma­jor news­casts. As a se­nior broad­cast jour­nal­ist, he has cov­ered break­ing news sto­ries and pro­duced in-depth news fea­tures for mul­ti­ple plat­forms.

Khamal Georges

Khamal Georges

Khamal Georges worked at CNC3 for 13 years, go­ing from jour­nal­ist/pro­duc­er to News An­chor and then to Lead Ed­i­tor, News Gath­er­ing. In his years as an­chor, he cov­ered many ma­jor sto­ries, in­clud­ing the im­pact of Hur­ri­cane Matthew in Haiti in 2016 and Nel­son Man­dela’s fu­ner­al in South Africa in 2013.

When Khamal left CNC3 in 2022, the com­pa­ny stat­ed: “In the last 13 years, Khamal has demon­strat­ed com­pe­tence and lead­er­ship be­yond his years. Ear­ly in his time at CNC3, he dis­tin­guished him­self as a ca­pa­ble and coura­geous jour­nal­ist. He is renowned for his abil­i­ty to de­liv­er high-qual­i­ty re­port­ing un­der dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances.”

He is cur­rent­ly se­nior man­ag­er, en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial, rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment with TSTT and is al­so on the gen­der ad­vi­so­ry board at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.

Golda Lee Bruce

Gol­da Lee Bruce

For just over sev­en years, from 2011 to 2018, Gol­da Lee Bruce worked with CNC3 as a re­porter, an an­chor, a pro­duc­er and Deputy Head of News. But it was her years as news an­chor that won her the hearts and minds of T&T. The dy­nam­ic com­bi­na­tion of Bruce and Khamal Georges drew a phe­nom­e­nal num­ber of view­ers to the 7 pm news­cast, with Gol­da’s blend of open­ness, ap­proach­a­bil­i­ty and ef­fer­ves­cence win­ning her many fans. Since leav­ing CNC3, Bruce has writ­ten a book on her child­hood mem­o­ries ti­tled Born on an Is­land, and is now a se­nior com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer with the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

In a chat with the Guardian this year, Gol­da de­scribed her in­ter­view with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as one of her great­est chal­lenges and a high­light of her ca­reer. Gol­da told Fay­ola Fras­er that the most chal­leng­ing mo­ments of her ca­reer con­sti­tute the most defin­ing pro­fes­sion­al mo­ments.

The in­ter­view with Dr Row­ley was slat­ed for 90 min­utes and Gol­da felt whol­ly un­sure about whether ‘she had the chops’, if she could sus­tain her mo­men­tum, and whether she was good enough.

As she re­flect­ed on the much an­tic­i­pat­ed day, Bruce re­called suc­cess­ful­ly keep­ing her nerves at bay, af­firm­ing that “when the ground didn’t swal­low me and I fin­ished what was a strong in­ter­view, it proved to me I could do dif­fi­cult things.” In prov­ing to her­self that she could rise to the oc­ca­sion, she felt her­self stretch and grow. This, along with oth­er piv­otal ca­reer mo­ments, have served her fun­da­men­tal­ly not on­ly as a jour­nal­ist, but have pro­vid­ed an un­shake­able foun­da­tion for her ca­reer tran­si­tion.

Hema Ramkissoon

Hema Ramkissoon

Hema Ramkissoon brought her par­tic­u­lar brand of fast and in­ci­sive jour­nal­ism to CNC3 for just over a to­tal of 14 years. Dur­ing that time, she had roles as both Deputy Head of News and host of the huge­ly suc­cess­ful The Morn­ing Brew.

“I think CNC3 and my time at Guardian Me­dia re­al­ly shaped the per­son that I am. I was forced to grow up, at a very young age I was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to host a news and cur­rent af­fairs show in the morn­ing that saw me in­ter­view­ing some of the largest per­son­al­i­ties in the coun­try, the pol­i­cy mak­ers, the movers and shak­ers,” she said.

Hema says that her abil­i­ty to work un­der pres­sure, to un­der­stand per­son­al­i­ties and to stand up for her­self, all came from her years at CNC3.

Hema is cur­rent­ly work­ing in­de­pen­dent­ly as a mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant, while al­so rais­ing her first child. She is a suc­cess­ful mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er and con­tin­ues to vol­un­teer for var­i­ous NGOs and caus­es.

Francesca Hawkins

Francesca Hawkins was a well-es­tab­lished jour­nal­ist, pre­sen­ter and an­chor when she joined the CNC3 team in 2006, chiefly as the week­end an­chor. Hawkins is al­so a re­spect­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist and has won ac­co­lades for her work as a film pro­duc­er. Dur­ing her time at CNC3, she was al­so in­volved in oth­er me­dia pro­duc­tions and had a wide­spread and faith­ful fol­low­ing from the wider pub­lic in T&T.

Robert Dumas

Robert Du­mas

Robert Du­mas joined CNC3 in 2015 as Sports Di­rec­tor. He went on to be­come Lead Pro­duc­er, CNC3 TV (Com­mer­cial) and is cur­rent­ly Head of TV Pro­duc­tion & Dig­i­tal. Du­mas brought a wealth of knowl­edge with him when he joined CNC3 hav­ing worked as a pre­sen­ter for BET Jazz as well as the Unit­ed Na­tions. He was ed­u­cat­ed in the UK, Ger­many, New York and Los An­ge­les.

Ac­cord­ing to Du­mas the high­lights of his ca­reer so far have been cov­er­ing the World Cup in Qatar and the Olympics in Brazil. He be­lieves that his best in­ter­view took place with In­di­an su­per­star Shah Rukh Khan, who is al­so the own­er of the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers. Du­mas has not been just a sports an­nounc­er, he al­so lives the life of a sport en­thu­si­ast with a pas­sion for hik­ing, scu­ba div­ing, fish­ing and fly­ing. His favourite quote is: “Suc­cess is not fi­nal, fail­ure is not fa­tal: it is the courage to con­tin­ue that counts.”

Natalee Legore

Na­talee Legore

Na­talee Legore host­ed ‘The Morn­ing Brew’ from June 2020 to Jan­u­ary 2021. The broad­cast jour­nal­ist says she is grate­ful for time at CNC3 since it gave her the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­but her on­screen tal­ent.

She en­joyed a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship with The Morn­ing Brew team and got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn more about broad­cast me­dia.

She says that the high­light for her and the thing that got her up at the “un­god­ly hour” of 3.30 am, was “just be­ing able to reach the peo­ple who chose every day to get up and choose us. That’s some­thing that is price­less.”

She says it was not about rat­ings and com­pe­ti­tion but about the pub­lic trust­ing the show for their news and cur­rent af­fairs and re­ly­ing on them “to be fac­tu­al, truth­ful and hon­est, even opin­ion­at­ed.”

segonie mohammed

Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Seigo­nie Mo­hammed was the weath­er an­chor at CNC 3 for over five years. Her re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clud­ed the col­lec­tion and analy­sis of da­ta for fore­cast­ing pur­pos­es, as well as con­tent pre­sen­ta­tion for broad­cast through the Cin­e­maLive HD sys­tem. She re­port­ed on both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al weath­er and weath­er-re­lat­ed events and pre­sent­ed weath­er re­ports/seg­ments for use both live on TV and on the web.

Mo­hammed has a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence and is skilled in broad­cast jour­nal­ism, ra­dio host­ing, weath­er fore­cast­ing, pub­lic re­la­tions, and video edit­ing.

Er­ic Mack­ie

Er­ic Mack­ie was the weath­er an­chor for CNC3 from 2005 to 2013. Af­ter re­tir­ing from the com­pa­ny he went on to serve as the Re­gion­al Di­rec­tor of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM).

Roger Sant

Roger Sant

Roger Sant came to CNC3 with a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence as a well-round­ed jour­nal­ist able to take on any sto­ry. For near­ly 10 years he took on the man­tle of Sports Di­rec­tor at this new sta­tion and quick­ly made it THE place to get your lat­est sport­ing fix.

Sant joined CNC3 in 2005 and was part of the team that helped bring the new sta­tion to re­al­i­ty. He notes that his stand­out mo­ment at the sta­tion was bring­ing it all to­geth­er and re­cruit­ing oth­ers to join. It was a time, he says, when they didn’t have any­thing and had to cre­ate every­thing, from cre­at­ing the look and feel to the pro­gram­ming and more.

“Com­ing from where we were, we had a point to prove. TV6 was dom­i­nant in the mid 2000 pe­ri­od so yes, we had a point to prove as a start-up sta­tion and we had to com­pete with them as well. We had to find dif­fer­ent strate­gies to do that and we had to be a lot more ag­gres­sive in cov­er­ing news and sports.”

He gave the ex­am­ples of the col­lapse of a scaf­fold­ing at the gov­ern­ment cam­pus and the ex­plo­sion of a bomb in St James where the team de­cid­ed to go on air for sev­er­al hours so as to bring view­ers up to date on every­thing while it was hap­pen­ing.”

The CNC3 cov­er­age of ma­jor sport­ing events at that time, how­ev­er, was the thing that showed the sta­tion to be out of the or­di­nary and ready to try new things. CNC3 was just a ba­by when T&T qual­i­fied for the World Cup but the com­pa­ny was de­ter­mined to make some­thing of it. Sant and Hank Williams trav­elled to­geth­er to Ger­many to fol­low the team and the thou­sands of TT peo­ple who had gone to sup­port the team.

“Our strat­e­gy was to look for gaps and we were able to do that in Ger­many, in the two Olympics that we cov­ered and the 2014 World Cup. We were beat­ing TV6 in cov­er­age of Ger­many be­cause while they had the rights to the games we had the flavour. We found a for­mu­la of find­ing the sto­ries, pack­ag­ing them and send­ing them back home. It was a time of very slow in­ter­net con­nec­tions, lim­it­ed tech­nol­o­gy, and a three minute sto­ry could take 20 min­utes to send.”

Sant has moved on from CNC3 and is now the com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er at NGC CNG.

Char­lene Ramd­hanie

Char­lene Ramd­hanie was an­oth­er fa­mil­iar face on CNC3. She dis­tin­guished her­self as an an­chor and worked tire­less­ly to de­liv­er the news.

Shelly Dass

Shelly Dass

Shelly Dass (Man­ning) worked as a tele­vi­sion news pre­sen­ter in the coun­try un­til May 2010. She was one of the very first trust­ed faces on CNC 3 as she did the 7 pm news. Dass, who orig­i­nal­ly hails from Pointe-a-Pierre at­tend­ed St. Joseph’s Con­vent, and Oral Roberts Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed States, where she stud­ied broad­cast jour­nal­ism.

In ad­di­tion to her an­chor du­ties, she was al­so the pro­duc­er and mod­er­a­tor of the hit cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme The Big Sto­ry on CNC3. Un­der her guid­ance, she and the team at the time won four awards for analy­sis and cov­er­age just three months in­to its air­ing. In 2015, Dass re­turned to CNC3 to an­chor the sta­tion’s 10-year an­niver­sary news­cast along with for­mer an­chors Ode­ka O’Neil (Seaton) and Roger Sant. Her ca­reer con­tin­u­al­ly pro­gressed with the com­pa­ny and she was pro­mot­ed to Head of News of the Guardian Me­dia Ltd, the par­ent com­pa­ny of CNC3.

Ode­ka O’Neil

Ode­ka O’Neil has more than a decade of ex­pe­ri­ence in jour­nal­ism. She re­ceived train­ing from vet­er­an BBC Broad­cast­ers for two years in Wales, Unit­ed King­dom where she stud­ied be­tween 2003 to 2007. She ac­quired her diplo­ma in broad­cast jour­nal­ism and ob­tained a Mas­ter of Arts De­gree in In­ter­na­tion­al Jour­nal­ism at Cardiff Uni­ver­si­ty, Wales, UK in 2007. She has al­so worked as the com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­ag­er at a di­vi­sion in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

carla foderingham

Car­la Foder­ing­ham

Car­la Foder­ing­ham was an­oth­er of the fa­mil­iar faces who de­liv­ered the news on CNC 3. Her tele­vi­sion ca­reer be­gan in 1996 and she worked at sev­er­al of the ma­jor me­dia hous­es be­fore be­com­ing a front­line pre­sen­ter in 2005 at CNC 3. She jug­gled her an­chor job with her job at the T&T Film Com­pa­ny for sev­er­al years be­fore pur­su­ing that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty full-time.