It’s true that the old adage which says when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade is a cliché, but still it is one that is more than applicable to Gabrielle Belgrave.
Gabrielle is a young woman who chartered one particular path for her life but seemingly that wasn’t meant to be and as life would have it, her plan B didn’t work out either.
So what did she do? Sit back, become bitter and make excuses? No! She made lemonade.
After this spunky and enthusiastic lady left Harrison College to embark on her studies at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus, she had big dreams that upon graduating with her first degree in biochemistry and biology she would become a big time biochemist with a state-of- the-art lab.
Hanging out with EASY recently at The Walk in Welches, St Thomas, a smiling Gabrielle recounted that when she left university and was looking for a position in herfield of study, she was interviewed by a guy who stated bluntly that she wasn’t built for lab work.
“I looked at him and said, ‘How can you say that?’” she recalled.
Determined to prove him wrong she eventually found a job where she could exercise her degree working as a quality technician. Trying to fit into her new role she soon realised the guy might just be right and thereafter the job hunting began again.
In 2007, the St George native came across an opening for a telecommunications analyst at Cable & Wireless she applied and was successful. Stating boldly that her St Lucian born mother always raised her three daughters with the mantra “they could do whatever they believed”, Gabrielle, who had a minuscule background in information technology, was confident that her analytical skills could serve her best.
She started that job, in addition, taking up the challenge of reading for a master’s degree in international business management and subsequently certification in quality assurance, with several professional certifications.
One of her proudest moments came when she resolved through hell or high water she would be successful in the highly failed Certified Manager of quality and organisational excellence course.
She was successful but that high came to a drastic low when in 2013 she was one among a bunch to be let go in the restructuring process of the company.
Playing with her beautifully manicured fingernails, Gabrielle reminisced that at first she accepted the job loss as a great learning opportunity. However, with a fighting spirit and her mother’s voice ringing in her head, asking that familiar question: ‘Did you do your best?’ she knew that losing the job wasn’t something she was going to take sitting down.
A few weeks later there were job openings at C&W, now LIME, and within a month, “on September 1, 2013, at 9 a .m.,” Gabrielle quipped, she was back to work, though in another capacity. This time the 30-year-old was the Manager of managed services operations to supervise the company’s Ericsson contract. What makes this role so special is that she is the only female who heads this sector in all of the 13 countries where LIME operates.
Gabrielle’s role as manager, among a host of other activities, entails her to meet with Ericsson’s heads to ensure what they are doing is for the best interest of LIME customers, as well as to guarantee that all targets set are achieved and all customer issues are addressed in a timely manner.
As a woman and a young one with such immense responsibilities, they may be some people who would question her capabilities. But Gabrielle maintains that this has never been the case from her five-person team made up of mostly men. And why is that? She believes her team fully supports her because they know that she supports them.
“It is the environment that you create as a manager for your staff to operate in. People need to know that when the chips are down I am going to support them . . . . It is a two-way street. I can’t say you support me and then when you are out there struggling trying to get [the job] done I tell you ‘get through’.
“I have worked in jobs like that . . . where sometimes you feel you are no better than the scuff on the bottom of someone’s shoes. I’ve been in jobs where it has been so stressful your hair has dropped out. I believe that what goes around comes around and that if I do that to somebody else what happens to me will be even worse. I never wanted to create that environment,” she said.
So far, so good. She said her team is made up of some of the best technicians in the business, and she has been able to learn so much from them which has enhanced her confidence.
“A few years ago I would have never done this interview. I would have found 101 reasons why I shouldn’t. Men are game for it so I had to change the way that I operated where people were looking to me to manage a contract and I was looking around for somebody else to do it. You need to make a decision and be secure in the decision. I find that my faith, my family has brought me through the tough times, the rough times.
“For me it has been a year of stepping up to the plate, grabbing those opportunities and realising that I have been granted an opportunity bigger than a lot of women do have in this world. Things will go wrong but . . . for me it is about realising it is a man’s world only if you don’t try,” Gabrielle said.
“There are certain things that they will do better than you, I am not saying please haul 600 pounds of cables. . . but there are certain positions that nobody ever said because he is a man he is better at finance, nobody told Margaret Thatcher so, nobody told Hillary Clinton so and yes they are times that you get at a table and they are all men but the problem is, what is the impression you are going to leave them with? Silence? Giggling? Or a contribution that makes them say I can come back to her because she knows what she is talking about?”
Gabrielle admitted her favourite shows are How To Get Away With Murder, Scandal and Empire . . . television shows whose lead characters were strong, black women, because, just like those leading women, she still has much to achieve.
“I wouldn’t mind being CEO but I have to ensure that when that opportunity does come that I am ready to take it up . . . . You can’t just sit there in a job and don’t care about improving yourself. That is a promise I made to myself and I intend to keep current in whatever I do. Your ability to keep yourself current, your ability to know what is happening around you is paramount.
“I have goals. And it’s all about dreaming very, very big. I wasn’t discouraged as a female and I am not going to discourage anybody else because they are people who just need one word, one belief.
“I don’t want to stop where I am, I want to keep going. Don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself. Life will not always give you grapes and strawberries, they will give you lemons,” she advised. (SDB Media)
