UWI benefit award recipient: Nothing more important than education

Stanley Julien, Trinidad-born recipient of this year’s UWI Toronto Benefit’s Vice Chancellor Award, believes there is nothing more important than education and mentorship for young people.

Julien, who was presented with the award last Saturday at the benefit’s black-tie event, spoke to Business Day before receiving the award. He said he hopes organisations such as UWI and the Negro Community Centre (NCC), where he spent a significant part of his youth, continue to inspire young black people to go into the financial sector.

“Simply put, I hope that we continue to build a pipeline where young black youth see the financial sector as a possible career path,” he said in correspondence with Business Day.

Julien, head of the special accounts management unit for Bank of Montreal, is the co-founder of the Canadian Association of Urban Financial Professionals (CAUFP).

The CAUFP is dedicated to encouraging young black people to enter the financial services industry and enhancing the financial literacy of the black community.

Julien said CAUFP was the outgrowth of a US-based organisation, the National Association of Urban Bankers.

He told Business Day the organisation was an inspiration for his own association.

“Given the lack of representation of blacks in the financial sector in Canada, it was inspirational for us to form a Canadian version and still be vibrant 27 years later,” he said.

He was also the chair of the Black Business and Professional Association (BBPA’s) National Scholarship Fund, where he led a team in providing more than US$1 million in scholarships for students in Canada.

But before that, he was himself inspired through the NCC. He said the centre was a space where the black community received positive influences and his experiences there instilled a culture of success which still benefits him today.

“The NCC was the cornerstone of the black community in Montreal,” he said.

“It laid the foundation for many of us who arrived from the Caribbean.”

Following his mantra – anything is possible – Julien uses his experiences and knowledge in the banking and financial sector to inspire youth to seeing the sector as a viable option for their own futures.

He added that his TT heritage and his African ancestry were very important to him as someone living in another country. He said the grounding of knowing his history continues to inspire him to be great.

The UWI Toronto Benefit Awards were established in 2010 to raise funds for the university’s scholarship programme, which provides financial assistance to incoming and existing students who exhibit dire financial need and are registered in priority degree programmes.

To date, it has awarded over 700 scholarships to students in all faculties, including medical sciences, law, arts and humanities.

The scholarship programme, with the help of the Benefit Awards, also honoured over 100 individuals and institutions and raised close to CAD$3 million.

This year, the awards were held at the Ritz-Carlton in Toronto under the theme “Lighting the way together.”

Those honoured in the past include Harry Belafonte, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, former deputy chief of Toronto police Keith L Forde, David Rudder and Naomi Campbell.