Carpha's new executive director Dr Lisa Indar's passion to help the Caribbean

Hard work and determination are some of the most important attributes to have if you want to succeed, says executive director of Caribbean Public Health Agency (Carpha) Dr Lisa Indar.

Indar holds a PhD, MSc and BSc from UWI and studied multiple disciplines including epidemiology, microbiology and environmental health. She was fortunate to study at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Public Health England and other prestigious international institutes.

Despite her qualifications, she believes self-confidence and being able to deliver are also important.

“I’m not saying education is not important. I wouldn’t even be eligible to apply for the executive director post if I didn’t have a PhD, or so many years of experience in management. What I’m saying is, it’s not the only thing.

“It’s about believing in yourself and getting things done. We have a lot of people who come through Carpha. Sometimes people are well educated and sometimes people are not as well-educated, but they have the experience, the passion and the ability to work hard.”

The Chaguanas resident started as the interim executive director in July of last year, but that was no guarantee she would get the permanent position.

She recalled, on June 30, while conducting the ICC T20 Cricket World Cup mass-gathering exercise in Barbados, she saw a letter from the chair of the executive board saying she was selected to be the interim executive director as the term of the previous one had ended.

“It wasn’t something I knew was coming. But I was the director of surveillance, disease prevention and control since around 2019, so I had an idea of what to do at the highest level.

“I would have represented the executive director at many forums – at our heads of government, at our prime ministerial level, regional, at levels of international forums like the WHO (World Health Organization) and so on.”

So for her it was a natural transition. It was a lot of work but nothing too difficult, especially as she had a passion for public health and enjoyed developing health systems specific to the Caribbean.

As she did the work of the executive director, she got to like it, and applied for the role.

She said there was a stringent process including an interview with high-level officials, chief medical officers and agencies from across the Caribbean in December 2024, and the executive board which consisted of health ministers, chief medical officers and representatives from agencies like the Pan American Health Organization, agreed to her appointment.

She was confirmed as the executive director on February 1.

Indar had about 20 years of regional and international experience in public health, first at the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre (Carec) as the head of the food-borne disease programme, then at Carpha.

“I loved what I did as a director of surveillance. It allowed me to put pen to paper, put my passion into words, to be an impetus, to persuade and get things done for the region.

“You were developing Caribbean-tailored interventions that were meeting the specific requirements of the Caribbean, because the Caribbean is unlike any other place. We are small. We are porous. Our borders are interconnected. We have varying levels of surveillance capacities. We are vulnerable to climate change and disasters and so on. So anything you develop has to be matching these unique characteristics and its commonalities.”

During the pandemic, Indar led Carpha's technical response to covid19, writing documents on that, the laboratory response, and surveillance.

She managed the corporate services work of Carpha, its networks, partners and the politics involved. She worked with technocrats and stakeholders and had to ensure the organisation delivered interventions that were impactful, reliable and accessible.

She said as the Caribbean voice to public health, Carpha always had to be prepared. She said it was not just a public health agency but a regional agency that works with international partners, its clients, by providing evidence-based interventions. And it had to convince the region to use those interventions for the better.

Indar felt the pressure of the job all the time, but was driven and innovative, and believed in excelling.

That drive led her and her team to develop a mass-gathering surveillance system for the T20 Cricket World Cup. It monitored the thousands of people from around the world who descended on 20 Caribbean countries to congregate in large groups and who moved around the islands rapidly.

She said it was an ideal environment for spreading disease throughout the Caribbean so the system had to be digital, real-time, in-built, confidential and have an alert mechanism to manage, mitigate and stop the spread of any disease.

“And it worked, because during the cricket world cup you didn't see anything about outbreaks or things that were happening. Did we have little alerts and stuff happening? Yes, but we nipped it in a bud because the system worked.”

She also helped develop the integrated surveillance systems to track diseases and have various divisions – epidemiology, labs, environment, veterinary, etc – share data for rapid action. Also at a higher level, ministries of health, agriculture, finance, environment and others were able to see the possible impacts on public health and the measures Carpha suggested countries put in place.

She also crafted the regional tourism and health programme that was established in 2014, which involved information management systems, standards and training, in addition to several other programmes.

Asked where her passion for public health originated, Indar said she was doing her master's when a lecturer had a session on public health. He said they had a chance to impact one person or, with public health, they could impact change in a country or region.

“That really got to me. I was bitten by the bug.

“And very early in my career, I remember being interviewed for a position in WHO in Geneva for the head of their food-borne division. And I was thinking, ‘But what do you really want Lisa? You want to give back to the Caribbean region. Yes, you're passionate, but you want to see the Caribbean soar.'”

She wanted to help lead the Caribbean in areas such as laboratories, early warning systems and be able to have digital systems of surveillance that gave countries alerts.

Being a good leader, she said, meant leading by example, showing people how things could be done, being able to listen to others, working well with others, being able to influence others and being persuasive.

Yet, she said she saw no hierarchy as everyone was part of the team.

“None of us can stand by ourselves. Success depends on all of us working together.”
Indar said she always had to be credible, accurate and do her best, traits that were instilled in her by her late mother.

“As a woman in any field you always have to excel. And it's not just in the Caribbean. It's the world. Sometimes a woman has to prove herself more. But I never felt threatened by that because the way I operate is always to excel."

She said working in a male-dominated field was “a nice challenge” and hoped her success would inspire women to see nothing was impossible, and they could be impactful and powerful leaders.

“You can become an independent, strong woman if you believe in hard work.”

Indar said those values came from experience.

She recalled her father died when she was young, leaving her mother to run the family business, and care for three daughters and a son. She never remarried and Indar worked with her in the business.

“I think that really helped me. That type of management and working on that level helped give me the experience I needed to then go for my career. Because fresh out of university, the first job I applied to was at Carec as head of a department. That's how I started.”

She described her mother was “a strong Christian woman” who focused on the positives, encouraged her children to do their best, and told her to stop complaining, that nothing was impossible and to have faith.

Indar had a lot of family support throughout her career, as her mother was one of 12 siblings so aunts and uncles were always around when they were young.

Her mother kept the family together, encouraged her to do well in her studies and pushed her to further her education despite their financial situation, so she worked hard to get scholarships.

“My mother never saw the hard work. She saw the solutions. And I think that’s what transferred into me. People come to me with challenges and the first thing I would say is, ‘How do we get this done? How do we fix this?’ I’m about results.”

Indar has a son and a daughter and her siblings also have children, so the family spent a lot of time together. Her family and her faith in God have been the backbone of her life.

With her drive to excel, she had to make a concerted effort to find balance in her life.

“There are days where I'm overdoing it and where I feel sometimes I'm not always giving my children or my family the attention they need. But every day you have to be at it. Spiritual, physical, mental – you have to be at it. But spending time with my family is something I have managed to make time for in all my craziness.”

Indar has mentored several people over the years and often had to push them to believe in themselves so they could reach for the top of their chosen fields. As a result, for her “next chapter” she wants to pay it forward, give back more to young people and to the region, and teach people to give back.