Charlene Pedro offers guidance for women in leadership

If you have the opportunity to make someone’s life better, to support someone in their journey, you do it without looking for any fame, glory or thanks. Just do it.

That is how Charlene Pedro lives her life, what guided her towards her career and why she works to help people become better humans and leaders. And that mentality is evident in her accomplishments.

Pedro is the founder of Conventus Consultinc, an HR consultancy firm, the designer of the Mastery of Me and Conversations Over Coffee With Charlene Pedro leadership programmes and a talk show host at a digital radio station centred on professional development.

She volunteers at St Vincent De Paul and is a partner in service with the San Juan Rotary Club. She is also the past president of the Association of Female Executives of Trinidad and Tobago (AFETT), former director of the Employers’ Consultative Association, is on the PR committee of the Human Resource Management Association of TT and is the author of Journey to Me – A Guided Journal to A Better You.

She told WMN she got her giving spirit from her late mother who developed it in her six children from a young age. She recalled her mother making a big pot of pelau on most Saturdays, putting it into boxes and the family heading to Port of Spain where the children would distribute them to the homeless.

Her mother was also part of many groups at their church, St Theresa RC Church in Malick, Barataria, and would make sure to be there to sing in the choir at every funeral. Pedro herself volunteered at the church since she was a teenager.

WALKING IN FAITH

Growing up in Barataria, Pedro had a home full of love and fun. As her parents had three boys and three girls, with her as the youngest, they called themselves the Brady Bunch.

Because her mother worked in the office of the chief justice, she wanted to become a lawyer. At some point she changed her mind and did not know what she wanted to do, so she focused on working. A friend encouraged her to do a business certificate programme at UWI and the lecturer encouraged the class to do a degree, so she did.

“In our home we never had conversations about going to university. My parents were senior civil servants and going to university just never came up, so it wasn’t a goal of mine until much later in life.”

In 1996 she decided to pursue business management at UWI. But the class was full so she studied management which introduced her to the human element of business, a circumstance for which she was forever grateful.

She graduated with a bachelor’s degree sociology and management from UWI, St Augustine in 2000. She earned her master’s degree in business administration from the Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University in Scotland with a local tertiary education institute in 2010 and, by that time, had completed several certificate programmes.

When she first started UWI, her first daughter was three months old and, for the first two years she attended school part-time. She recalled her husband, who she married on the Sunday after the start of the 1990 attempted coup, would drop her to work in Port of Spain for 7 am where she would skip her lunch hour so she could leave early to get to class on time.

On her way to class, she would stop off by her parents’ home to breastfeed her daughter and she would either wake up early or stay up late to study. And since the next two years were full-time classes, she left her job against everyone’s advice.

While her life was busy and her family had to make sacrifices, she never considered it a struggle.

“Everything for me has been a walk in faith. I always tell people God’s got my back. He never had me starving and I won’t be starving now. And that job was paying so little I didn’t miss it when I left.

“My husband is a teacher so we lived on his salary, and my parents were very supportive so it wasn’t hard times at all. I enjoyed every moment of it. It’s all about perspective. I never saw any of it as difficult. I just saw it as walking the walk and going through the process. This is what you want, this is what you need to do. So you would have always found me with a smile on my face.”

After UWI she was hired as a corporate services officer and HR was part of her responsibilities. She realised it was something she enjoyed and wanted to continue working in the field. Eventually the company created a human resource department and she became the HR officer, then HR manager.

She had enjoyed the HR courses at UWI, much of the interactions with employees and strived to help meet the company’s goals.

“That was my utopia – that you could have an organisation where both management and employees singing from the same hymn sheet, working towards the same goal, a psychologically safe organisation where people are inspired to come to work. Your organisation's culture is how your employees feel on Sunday night.”

She had worked at the company for about 11 years when the CEO called her into his office and told her to advertise her job internally as a vacancy. She was advised to apply for her position to “signal her interest” but was told she was not qualified for the position.

She knew she was going to be fired and, for several months, she looked for another job while she continued to work for the organisation. She was stressed and upset but one day she thought to herself, “Let go and let God.”

“I remember writing on my whiteboard, ‘No weapon formed before me shall prosper.’ And I'm telling you, after that, I was at peace. After that, everything started to just fall in place. I actually went to the CEO and said, ‘Release me,’ and I was eventually terminated.”

She said even though the other employees were upset, she felt relieved, free and happy.

“As I walked out that building my friend called and said, ‘Charlene, I have a client who is looking for an HR consultant. Are you available?’ I said, ‘Sure, I don’t have anything to do.’”

A meeting was set up, she was hired and one month later she registered her own HR consulting company. One month after that, in January 2013, Conventus Consultinc started operating.

BUSINESS OF LEADERSHIP

Conventus Consultinc provides several HR services including recruiting, reviewing or introducing performance management systems, ensuring organisational goals and job descriptions are aligned and more.

Some of the most popular programmes were designed by Pedro.

Mastery of Me is a 12-week online self-leadership programme for women.

Pedro said managers, supervisors and other business leaders tend to focus so much on the staff, they forget to look at themselves and see how they are contributing to employees underperforming or not being engaged.

Mastery of Me is geared towards women who have successful careers and want a more fulfilling life. She said it helps them find the things that “set their soul on fire” and helps them increase their confidence.

“It started in 2020 when covid just started. Every day we were looking at Ministry of Health updates and everything was so dark, gloomy and about death. I wanted to do something to shift people's mindsets so I had a free online series of training programmes on transformational leadership and a leadership assessment in the afternoons.

“After that a few of the women reached out to me and said they wanted to continue working on their goals and essentially continue living during covid. From that, rather than looking at people individually, I said let me just design a programme.”

She said covid shifted people’s perspectives and priorities. They wanted to focus on themselves and do things that were meaningful to them. She designed the programme based on their needs and continues to make adjustments according to the feedback she gets from participants.

Training also includes helping leaders achieve their goals through their team, teaching them to be self-aware and, the difference between management and leadership.

“Remember, nobody wants to be managed but there are some people who are yearning for a leader who inspires them to do better. We manage processes and lead people.”

Mastery of Me is now into its sixth cohort and Pedro is proud of how it speak to people’s personal needs while providing a community and continued support.

“I never thought it would have had this impact. When they share, I get that there’s something deeper in terms of personal change and transformation and, I’m just blown away.”

The Conversations Over Coffee With Charlene Pedro programme is held every May to help leaders make a positive impact on their workplace. She explained that she had attended many breakfast meetings and they were stiff affairs but Conversations has an informal and intimate setting in which, in addition to her training, participants share their leadership journeys and lessons.

This May will be its sixth anniversary and that fact is a wonder to Pedro because, initially, she procrastinated to implement it as she was afraid no one would register. She was afraid to fail.

“That is again, a lesson that sometimes our fear of failure keeps us back. And it keeps us from sharing what somebody may need. That has changed my whole perspective when I have to do things, that somebody out there needs what you have.”

Pedro’s book, Journey To Me, was inspired by Mastery of Me and was launched at The Brix hotel on January 17. She said the programme has workbooks and exercises she developed to encourage self-reflection, person growth, self-gratitude, self-acceptance and more. She wanted to create something so those who did not attend the programme could benefit.

She is also the winner of the Spirit of AFETT Award at the 2023 Women of Influence – Awards and Mentorship Celebration.

This year’s Women of Influence will take place on March 27 at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s where AFETT will honour trailblazing women and provide an opportunity for mentorship through networking with high-impact women.