True Grit Feat. Dr. Camille Samuel

Have you ever met someone who left you feeling so happy that your paths crossed at least once in this life? That’s exactly how I felt when I interviewed Dr. Camille Samuel. She, to me, is the epitome of a great leader because she is so wrapped up in serving others that accolades and titles bear little weight in defining who she is. She remains focused by keeping her eyes on her mission - the advancement of others! From the tone of this blog, you can tell she made a powerful impact on me and I hope to express to you in a vivid way, just how thought-provoking our conversation was. Dr. Samuel currently holds the position of Deputy Campus Registrar at UWI. She has also filled many roles where she was tasked with managing and inspiring her team to participate in executing a common vision. The contributions that she made may be something that impacted you without you even knowing it. What resonated with me though, was her spirit of determination, grit, humility, gratitude and shy, but confident demeanor (it may sound oxymoronic but if you met her you would understand what I mean). There's a subtle fire about her that I can't really describe. If you want to read more about her achievements, then I highly recommend you check out this Newsday article: (click here). As for this blog, this is something a little different for your palette. This article features a story of how Dr. Samuel mobilized people to achieve a common goal, her role in making education more accessible for thousands of tertiary education students and some profound words of advice that she shared.

Let me draw your attention to a young lady who started off her career as a Human Resource Manager at Laughlin & De Gannes, straight out of university. Soon after this initial appointment, she was tasked with managing their automotive service center in Port of Spain then again with managing the Shell brand for the company. Determined to give it her all, she set about crafting some big goals that she wished to accomplish. She articulated one such goal to her team at the service centre -

"Let’s double our sales”.

She listened, compromised, communicated, and collaborated with her team, to ensure this goal was achieved. Although change is a difficult pill to swallow for most, Dr. Samuel welcomed the challenge with finesse and excelled at rallying her team to buy into the vision for increased sales. They provided her with relevant market information and came up with their own sales strategy. She provided them with some additional training, in management and what she learned about people, which helped to better prepare the team to execute this mission. Needless to say, sales increased by an extraordinary amount. After all, she was resolute in her pursuit to make it happen. This and other achievements of course caught the attention of many which led to her eventually securing more significant roles within the energy sector in T&T. When probed about her successes, it was clear that her understanding of people and her vision for more, made the wins possible. She mostly credits her respective teams for the achievement of seemingly impossible goals as she mentioned that they were all extremely accommodating of the vision and had a shared stake in the agreed outcomes.

Now let me take you to a time where she served as the Vice President of Student Affairs at COSTAATT. It was there that she was made privy to the administrative priorities of both staff and students, which stirred her to action. This knowledge brought with it an opportunity to find innovative solutions to address the matters raised. Additionally, since there had been some human resource shifts at the College, and there was a need to have the IT Department report into an executive position, the president, Dr. Gillian Paul, assigned Dr. Samuel, interim leadership responsibility for the unit and charged her with the task of improving IT service delivery to the College community. While managing the IT portfolio, Dr. Samuel recognized areas which were in need of re-engineering and became desirous of optimizing the operations, to improve the services offered to students and the work tools accessible to staff. She was in a position again to advocate for change. Although she was not an IT specialist, she utilized her knowledge about people, crisis management and process mapping and her desire to learn, to fulfill her newfound role. One of the major projects that she initiated at that time was the migration of on-premise data from the College’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, to a sleek and agile cloud-based platform. Her passion for the project and other similarly sized projects resulted in her being playfully branded as - ‘the Cloud Queen’ - as many legacy systems were strengthened and moved to a secure cloud. This time however, change was not met with as much accommodation as was the case with the projects done earlier in her career. There was indeed some significant degree of resistance as she incorporated many more voices in the planning process. She patiently listened and did her best to work with the team to maneuver them through the period of resistance. A noteworthy moment, she said, was when she compiled all the feedback and research into a proposal and presented it to the committee with responsibility for budgetary approval. As IT projects are infamous for being expensive, the entire team was pleasantly surprised when the project proposal was accepted in its entirety. This symbolized the start of a new journey, where several technological enhancements would soon be deployed. In a major way, COSTAATT's vision for utilizing technology to enhance the student experience would come to fruition. She was also instrumental in implementing other digital tools for students like a mobile version of the Banner ERP system which facilitated online course registration, an integrated AI-powered chat interface with students, virtual campus store fronts integrated with TouchNet’s online payment portal and online student payment facilities, linked to several local banks. COSTAATT's implementation of these and other systems was featured in international case studies and several COSTAATT achievements were used as the basis for the development of other colleges and universities in the region.

From the previous stories, it’s easy to tell that Dr. Samuel is a phenomenal woman that exemplifies true grit and has a wealth of knowledge. So, I couldn’t resist the chance to pass on some of the sage advice she shared with me. Firstly, she mentioned that it is important to have persons around you who will both challenge and support you. However, you must always make your own assessment even with the advice provided. We must all strive to be the best that we can be, encouraging each other, without fear that others may eventually be better or more knowledgeable. She pondered,

“just imagine what could be achieved with our collective knowledge working in unison. We already know how to put planes up in the sky. Imagine if we harnessed our collective power for good!”

She also stressed the importance of preparedness and stated that if you are not prepared to speak, then listen. She says if you must speak, speak when you have critical things to add and things that are worth considering. When asked about building confidence as a young leader, she went on to say that if you think about it,

“confidence occurs as part of the process of being prepared.”

A final piece of advice shared was that there is always learning to be done, so keep reading in your field and around the things that you’re passionate about. Even though you may believe you’ve already learned it all at school/university, there is great value in obtaining different perspectives on a subject, even years after. She also gave me some other words of encouragement, but I am holding that near to my heart...I hope you don’t mind. Her advice did not fall on deaf ears and I hope that you openly receive these words too.

In conclusion, this piece was a labor of love for me. Finding the right words to tell a snippet of Dr. Samuel’s story was difficult at first but when I tapped into the emotions that I felt while listening to her, the words came effortlessly. She mentioned to me that she loved to be in spaces where young people exist and I could tell that was a genuine statement - not because of her words but because of all she has done and is doing to help make their dreams more accessible. Many people dream about receiving an education and I can personally tell you, I deferred going to university for 6 years after trying to register multiple times. That process was so tedious and frustrating, to say the least. Knowing that she was a part of the team that implemented an easier registration process, personally touched me. I didn’t tell her this though. I am just one of many individuals who are sitting in the shade of the tree that she helped to plant and I will forever be grateful for this. She has so much vivacity in her that I know she still has some more trees to plant. Now, here’s a question for you: How do you wish to be remembered?