Dvance p raise for minding Their Own Business

party
of
a
lifetime
71
Icing on the Cake
Daniel, Gina’s former spouse, has known her for forty years. He 
believed that Island Caterers was a “flower in blooming” for over 
twenty years. Andy, her son, explained that Gina “feels like this is a 
work in progress, that the work has just begun and there is a lot more 
hard work and worry still to come.” For Aida, the daughter, she is con-
vinced that “a) you have to follow your spirit and b) once you follow 
your spirit it will take you there. And so wherever I end up in life, I am 
not worried about it because if my mother has accomplished what she 
has accomplished” with a secondary education, then her knowledge of 
life and how to live are an outstanding example of success.
Gina had a vision about her business life about six or seven years 
before she stepped out on her own to start Island Caterers. Daniel rem-
inisced that his ex-wife knew that “she was meant to be an employer” 
and that “in her heart [she knew] that she was more” than an employee 
in someone’s firm and that combined with “belief in herself that she 
can do it, and belief that God will guide her, and God will help her” are 
the main ingredients that have “made her successful as a Black entre-
preneur” from her earliest days in Trinidad. Gina knew early in her 
life that her destiny was written in an independent walk along life’s 
commercial paths. She explained:
I evolved from prior entrepreneurship and the knowledge when I moved to 
the United States that at some point I would run my own business again. As 
a matter a fact, I feel like the 12 years or so that I spent working for some-
body else, [was] sort of a journey getting back to what I know and … where 
I belonged, as far as work experience … as entrepreneurship … [has] always 
been part of who I am.
The “tenacity and drive” that Gina put into motion in her career path, 
according to Daniel, is symbolic of her approach to life. Andy, her son, 
witnessed the way that Gina positioned herself to keep on growing 
and bringing more dreams to life. He described Gina’s project for the 
company in these words:

---

72
minding
their
own
business
She wants to have a complete outfit where she can do catering, but also do the 
event planning, and have the hall where she can have the event. So if some-
one would come, it would be like one stop shopping for [your] catering your 
event. An entire package. That’s another … tangible thing I know she wants 
to get to.
This is not an idle dream, explained Andy, since Gina wanted to make 
sure that “[Island] Caterers can exist as an entity on its own, without 
her direction.” This is a sign of success, by Andy’s rubric, because Gina 
realized that she needed to include “people smarter than herself” to 
express the full potential of her vision.
This approach to passing on the business legacy to another generation 
is echoed by Aida, the daughter. She remembered Andy saying once that 
“the problem with owning your own small business, is that the business 
can only get as large as you can.” Since Gina recognized the importance 
of allowing others to inform her steps as she expanded the catering and 
event planning organization, she reminded herself that she was “going 
after what’s my love not simply an opportunity to make money but doing 
something that I love to do which is feeding people and seeing them 
happy and seeing them enjoying fellowship.” To keep herself grounded 
while she made decisions about hiring staff or expanding the reach of her 
business empire she recalled her beginning steps as an entrepreneur:
… finding my spot had to do with me and what I fell in love with about food 
and that was the joy of mealtime that I remember from childhood. When I 
decided to stay authentically Caribbean, it was because I felt that offering our 
cuisine was not only something that was in demand now but it went beyond 
the cuisine, it was an attitude. The fellowship, the camaraderie, the family, the 
general well-being and healthfulness of mealtime and what that meant for me 
and my family … growing up.
Gina, again, pointed out that her success was due to “the upbringing 
that I had” and the people with whom she associated. Her parents and 
her peers from high school were listed among the people who “because 
of strength of sisterhood, that is strength that gives you confidence” 
got her to take herself seriously and step out on the road to making 

---

gina
’
s