Suc­cess is rarely a mat­ter of luck.

It has al­ways been a mat­ter more of prepa­ra­tion and do­ing what needs to be done to put your­self in the path of op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Or, as hall of fame rac­er, Bob­by Unser suc­cinct­ly puts it “suc­cess is where prepa­ra­tion and op­por­tu­ni­ty meet.”

And it is this re­la­tion­ship be­tween prepa­ra­tion and op­por­tu­ni­ty that Eva Mitchell has at­trib­uted to her re­cent ap­point­ment as the sub­stan­tive chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the T&T Stock Ex­change af­ter six months of act­ing in the po­si­tion.

Mitchell has al­so been ap­point­ed the CEO of the T&T Cen­tral De­pos­i­to­ry Ltd, a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of the TTSE.

Her rise to the top of the TTSE has been a con­stant climb.

“I have al­ways been one to adopt a very prag­mat­ic ap­proach to my de­vel­op­ment whether it be per­son­al or ca­reer de­vel­op­ment and some­times that de­vel­op­ment can come as a re­sult of events that may hap­pen or just your gen­er­al ap­proach to life,” Mitchell told the Busi­ness Guardian.

“I came from very hum­ble be­gin­nings so we were forced to re­al­ly just use log­ic and rea­son­able­ness to solve prob­lems,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell’s work­ing life start­ed “very sim­ple.

“I start­ed work­ing in a book­store and that en­cour­aged my in­ter­est in read­ing. Work­ing at the book­store al­lowed us, all em­ploy­ees, to have ac­cess to the books and read. So it was kind of a li­brary but a li­brary that is typ­i­cal­ly your job and I found that I grav­i­tat­ed a lot to books on fi­nance,” Mitchell said.

At that point, Mitchell’s in­ter­est was piqued and she felt she need­ed to do ex­plore this world of Fi­nance some more.

“So I just start­ed to send out ap­pli­ca­tions and to my sur­prise, I got ac­cept­ed to start an in­tern­ship at the bank. I was al­so study­ing at that time as well,” she said.

She be­gan her bank­ing ca­reer as a cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive but was al­ways prepar­ing her­self for the next step.

“So what start­ed as a teller job to pay my way through uni­ver­si­ty opened up op­por­tu­ni­ties in sev­er­al pro­gres­sive roles with­in the bank­ing in­dus­try in the ar­eas of re­tail and com­mer­cial bank­ing, fi­nance and as­set man­age­ment be­fore the start of my ca­reer at the stock ex­change,” Mitchell said.

“I have al­ways ap­proached my ca­reer in such a way that I pre­pare my­self for the next role that I re­al­ly want to be in and op­er­at­ing with­in that scope and nat­u­ral­ly get­ting the op­por­tu­ni­ties,” she said.

In 2016 Mitchell joined the TTSE as a man­ag­er of mar­ket op­er­a­tions with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of over­see­ing the dai­ly mar­ket op­er­a­tions of the ex­change.

Her ca­reer spans over 19 years across the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor.

She holds a BSC in Busi­ness Man­age­ment from the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Brunswick as well as an MSc in In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance from the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness.

“Sit­ting at the top and run­ning two com­pa­nies is not an easy task but it was be­cause of my con­stant mode of prepa­ra­tion and sup­port that made my tran­si­tion less dif­fi­cult, I em­braced it,” she said.

What has helped her with the tran­si­tion to be­com­ing CEO, how­ev­er, is the sup­port of her en­tire team, Mitchell said.

“I have a very elite and amaz­ing team who un­der­stand the busi­ness, and un­der­stand the im­por­tance of the role of the stock mar­ket in the lo­cal cap­i­tal mar­ket in the coun­try,” she said.

Mitchell be­lieves in the vi­sion of the TTSE, which is to make it the first choice for is­suers who wish to raise funds and al­so for in­vestors who are look­ing for a home for their sav­ings.

And so far, Mitchell be­lieves sig­nif­i­cant strides have been tak­en to­ward ac­com­plish­ing that goal.

One such stride has been the launch of the new on­line trad­ing plat­form, TTSE On­line Plat­form (TOP) last Au­gust.

“In­vestors are call­ing for in­no­va­tion and have been ask­ing how can they in­vest in the stock mar­ket. We at the TTSE un­der­stood that we need­ed to re­spond to this in­ter­est in a way that adds a cer­tain lev­el of so­phis­ti­ca­tion to our mar­ket; TOP is tes­ta­ment to that call, TOP al­lows for fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion through in­no­va­tion, to the ex­tent where it opens up ac­cess to the stock mar­ket to in­vestors, both small and large, and adds that lev­el of so­phis­ti­ca­tion in the mar­ket that is need­ed for us to evolve,” Mitchell said.

At the end of April 2021, the to­tal trade val­ue on TOP was $41.7 mil­lion and has ac­count­ed for up to nine per cent of the to­tal month­ly trade val­ue.

Since its launch, over 500 share­hold­ers have ap­plied to ac­cess the plat­form.

“TOP has al­ready ex­ceed­ed our ex­pec­ta­tions and has opened the door for in­vestors to buy and sell se­cu­ri­ties, get a re­al-time view of the mar­ket, get stock prices and bet­ter man­age their stock port­fo­lio all from a mo­bile de­vice,” Mitchell said.

“Typ­i­cal­ly for you to trade on the stock mar­ket you may think of this as a doom and gloom or you may think of it as some sort of crazy, elu­sive idea as many think that stock mar­ket in­vest­ing is some­thing on­ly for the elite, but it is not. It is some­thing for the av­er­age in­vestor to par­tic­i­pate in; par­tic­i­pate in own­ing shares in some of the most recog­nised every­day brands that we en­joy and now you are able to have ac­cess di­rect­ly to a trad­ing plat­form where you can now buy or sell these shares,” she said.

Mitchell said TOP is a game chang­er. It em­pow­ers in­vestors and will en­cour­age a cer­tain lev­el of liq­uid­i­ty and depth in the mar­ket. We will see a new era of in­vestors emerge from the lo­cal stock mar­ket with these new dig­i­tal chan­nels.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Mitchell said moves are be­ing made to de­vel­op the TTSE Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (SMEs) mar­ket.

“Our SME mar­ket was launched in 2012 and since then we have on­ly had two list­ings on the SME mar­ket and the ex­change recog­nis­es the im­por­tance that this mar­ket plays to the growth and de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try, even more so now in a post COVID en­vi­ron­ment. We al­so un­der­stood that com­pa­nies seek­ing to list look to­wards a mar­ket that of­fers liq­uid­i­ty and so­phis­ti­ca­tion. So while we add TOP to the mar­ket to of­fer so­phis­ti­ca­tion, we un­der­took to fur­ther in­cen­tivise list­ings fur­ther to make it more at­trac­tive to is­suers, so they can utilise this as a means to raise funds and en­cour­age do­mes­tic in­vest­ing,” Mitchell said.

The TTSE con­tin­ues to do its part where that is con­cerned and now com­pa­nies list­ed in the SME mar­ket can en­joy some very gen­er­ous tax in­cen­tives, a ben­e­fit which has been agreed to by the gov­ern­ment and took ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2021. This we see as some­thing that is an­oth­er game chang­er. Even though we have been re­al­ly a debt-cen­tric cul­ture, COVID-19 has forced com­pa­nies to ex­plore oth­er fund­ing al­ter­na­tives that will al­low them to with­stand oth­er ex­oge­nous shocks and fu­ture­proof their bal­ance sheet.

“List­ing will al­so help SMEs to in­crease their vis­i­bil­i­ty as well as brand build­ing; im­prove their cred­it pro­file and pro­vide easy fi­nanc­ing for oth­er growth op­por­tu­ni­ties. There is a gen­er­al lack of aware­ness about the ben­e­fits of list­ing which has led to a lot of pre-con­ceived no­tions about list­ing. So to raise aware­ness, the TTSE is tak­ing proac­tive mea­sures to or­gan­ise we­bi­na­rs, col­lab­o­rate with the gov­ern­ment and oth­er as­so­ci­a­tions all in a bid to cre­ate aware­ness among SMEs about the ad­van­tage of eq­ui­ty fund­ing and list­ing,” she said.

In the wake of peo­ple putting their mon­ey in un­reg­u­lat­ed in­vest­ments, Mitchell said the goal is for the TTSE to bet­ter ed­u­cate them.

“We are in an era where we seek in­stant grat­i­fi­ca­tion and even more so when it comes to our mon­ey. So we are look­ing to get the great­est re­turn in the short­est space pos­si­ble and COVID 19 has es­ca­lat­ed this. These mod­ern-day sou-sou type in­vest­ments are re­al­ly schemes that pro­vide a very high rate of re­turn paid to ini­tial in­vestors out of the funds of suc­ces­sive in­vestors,” she said.

“Be­cause of how it is struc­tured it ends up with peo­ple los­ing all or most of their mon­ey be­cause it is not some­thing that is sus­tain­able and these schemes are dis­guised as trans­ac­tions in new or poor­ly un­der­stood in­vest­ment in­stru­ments that are not reg­u­lat­ed so there is sim­ply no pro­tec­tion,” Mitchell ex­plained.

“I think a so­lu­tion to that is, from a very young age we need to en­cour­age wise fi­nan­cial plan­ning, fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy, how to save and bud­get; and the stock ex­change has been very ac­tive in that, we un­der­stand our role and we do play our part to raise fi­nan­cial aware­ness and part­ner with the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers in do­ing so,” she said.

“I am not say­ing that the stock mar­ket does not come with risk, of course it does —every in­vest­ment is a risk; but if you were to use the stock mar­ket in the right way and use the ex­pert ad­vice from a bro­ker you can growth your wealth and reach your in­vest­ment goals,” she said.

With­in re­cent time, the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change has been mak­ing waves in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“I def­i­nite­ly think we can learn from the Ja­maica ex­pe­ri­ence; they have sure­ly earned it, adding to such a vi­brant cap­i­tal mar­ket, but it in­volved a lot of co­or­di­na­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion; some­thing that we are con­sis­tent­ly work­ing on” she said.