Dvance p raise for minding Their Own Business

Minding Their Own Business 
Five Female Leaders from 
Trinidad and Tobago 
PETER LANG 
New York  Bern  Frankfurt  Berlin
Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 
Names: Dowdy, Joanne Kilgour, author. 
Title: Minding their own business: five female leaders 
from Trinidad and Tobago / Joanne Kilgour Dowdy. 
Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2017. 
Series: Black studies and critical thinking, ISSN 1947-5985 | vol. 94 
Includes bibliographical references and index. 
Identifiers: LCCN 2017012945 | ISBN 978-1-4331-3386-2 (hardcover: alk. paper) 
ISBN 978-1-4331-3385-5 (paperback: alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4539-1853-1 (ebook pdf) 
ISBN 978-1-4331-4209-3 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4210-9 (mobi) 
Subjects: LCSH: Businesswomen—Trinidad and Tobago—Case studies. 
Women immigrants—Trinidad and Tobago—Case studies. 
Women-owned business enterprises—Case studies. 
Entrepreneurship—Case studies. 
Classification: LCC HD6054.4.T7 D69 2017 | DDC 338.092/520972983—dc23 
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017012945 
DOI 10.3726/978-1-4539-1853-1 
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. 
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
lists this publication in the “Deutsche 
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available 
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/. 
Cover photo: Gillian de Souza (used with permission) 
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability 
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity 
of the Council of Library Resources. 
© 2017 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 
29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006 
www.peterlang.com 
All rights reserved. 
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, 
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. 
Printed in the United States of America 

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To the women leaders I describe in this book. Thank you for allowing 
me to document your journey as you create success for yourselves and 
your communities.

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Contents
List of Tables 
ix
Chapter 1 The Businesswomen from Trinidad:
“Hucksters and Higglers” 
1
Chapter 2 Maria’s Mountain 
23
Chapter 3 Gee and Her Floral Arranging Life 
37
Chapter 4 Gina’s Party of a Lifetime 
59
Chapter 5 Nadine’s Publishing Pyramid 
75
Chapter 6 Fona’s Community Book Club 
93
Chapter 7 Business Is as Business Does 
111
Index 135

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Tables
Table 1. The Five Businesswomen and Their Family Trees 
9
Table 2. Support System for Each Businesswoman 
14

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Chapter 1
The Businesswomen from 
Trinidad 
“Hucksters and Higglers”
It is certain that, both by inheritance and by purchase with their independent 
earnings, many women owned property in their own right, although they 
were unable to vote on the basis of their property. (Craig-James, 2010)
During my first year living in Ohio, I decided to visit a longtime friend 
at her home in another state and begin documenting her journey as 
an independent business owner. My friend, Gina for our purposes, 
had just left her job where she was earning a “six figure salary” and 
decided to open her own catering business. I wanted to document her 
experience as an independent businesswoman since it seemed to me 
that she was off on an adventure that would be exciting, educational, 
and possibly a path to many other decisions that she might not be able 
to imagine at this early stage of her venture. This was an opportunity 
to be educated by someone who was experiencing hands-on learning, 
and I wanted to be right at her side as she created her vision and lived 
the reality of her choices.
Then, in 2003 I decided to visit my oldest aunt in Jamaica. My inten-
tion was simply to spend two weeks in a leisurely fashion, sitting on 

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2
minding
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her back porch, chatting about family and visiting with her friends. In 
a few days after my arrival, however, I was caught up in a whirlwind 
of activity that involved her floral arranging and gift basket business. 
Gee, the name I gave her for my research project, had given me notice 
that Christmas was a busy season for her small business, run from her 
home, and that all hands were expected to contribute to the wrapping 
of gift baskets and delivering of floral arrangements to her customers. 
It didn’t take much for me to “wash my foot and jump in” as our family 
always said when people were expected to participate without much 
preamble in events. In other words, we were taught to go with the flow. 
What surprised me about this somewhat unexpected turn of events, 
though, was that my aunt explained that she was actually winding 
down her business and that the number of customers who were getting 
her attention during that holiday month were actually a small group of 
friends and long-time associates.
Immediately, I began asking questions about the history of her 
business and the background that prepared her to carry on such a brisk 
trade in flowers. Her answers, doled out between cutting flowers, pre-
paring them for baskets of different sizes and shapes, answering calls 
from last minute clients who needed gifts to send to various friends, 
and checking her list of addresses for deliveries, led me to believe that 
I was in the middle of some serious data gathering. Why waste the 
opportunity to learn about a black woman’s business history when I 
had a willing participant in front of me? How could a woman who was 
an immigrant in this country develop and sustain her own business 
over twenty years? What could I ask of the friends and associates who 
had been using this florist for several years, and did not intend to let 
her retire when she felt the need to take a long rest from the demands 
of her trade?
At some time in the early years of my life in Trinidad I found out 
that my great grandmother, Mrs. Tee is the name that I use in this study, 
once ran her own business. As a child, I remembered seeing her garden 
and always noted that she had the most beautiful flowers in her space. 
Her blooms including tube roses, croten, and the anthurium lilies were 
some of my favorites. Many years later after my grandmother died

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the
businesswomen
from
trinidad
3
I found out that her mother, Mrs. Tee, ran a floral business and those 
tube roses that grew at the side of the front gate to the house were used 
to make bridal bouquets. In retrospect, it should not have surprised me 
that my aunt, a descendant of Mrs. Tee, had an interest in flowers. In 
fact, I was soon to discover that my aunt Gee had more than an “inter-
est” in flowers. She was passionate about the “art of floral arranging” 
as she explained, and she was able to parlay this burning desire into a 
service for people who appreciated quality designs using fresh flowers. 
Over the course of the following three years I was to learn about her 
evolution in this path with flowers and service to people, and to rear-
range my understanding of her. Until this visit to her home in Jamaica 
I had always thought of her as a retired secretary.
Before I left my aunt’s home in Jamaica, I was introduced to sev-
eral of the women who made up her business circle. It was fortunate 
that I was able to reconnect with a former high school friend, Maria 
is the name I give her in this story, now living on the island, and who 
was also running her own business. We arranged to meet during my 
vacation and after our first visit I was able to convince her that she had 
a story to tell that would benefit those who learned about her. Maria, 
too, had moved to a country where she had no family or business con-
nections, and started her own public relations firm. We recorded an 
interview about her history as a business owner while sitting in her car 
one day. This occasion was another eye-opening adventure because I 
had formerly thought of my old friend from Trinidad as a journalist. 
Her transition into public relations was of interest to me, particularly 
because she was now known as one of the premier providers of public 
relations services to some of the top firms in her new country.
My interest in black, female business owners who were immigrants 
and prospering in their new homes overseas continued to lead me to 
other friends who were managing their own companies. One entre-
preneur was running a bookstore in the neighborhood where I lived 
and she also happened to be originally from Trinidad and recently 
migrated to the state where we lived. Another businesswoman who 
was writing and selling books from her home came into my life when 
we both attended a presentation by a Trinidadian poet in the fifth state 

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4
minding
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where I lived and worked as an academic. Nadine, as I called her in 
my research, and I had not seen each other since we left high school 
in Trinidad. As the owner of a small publishing house in the Midwest, 
Nadine later worked with me on a book and following that experience 
I decided to document her story as a businesswoman. Her need to see 
her own stories in print was the driving force behind her decision to 
learn how to publish and promote her books so that other Caribbean 
people might enjoy the work that she produced.
Black Women in Business Since Slavery
Susan Craig-James (2010) states that due to the “severely high death” 
rates among black men working on sugar plantations, by 1838 the 
majority of plantation and domestic workers were women in Tobago. 
In Trinidad, the sister island, the women were involved in a form of 
resistance to the brutal system of forced labor that was particularly 
harsh: poisoning (Reddock, 1994). Tobago was soon to be annexed to 
Trinidad and in the ensuing years a great deal of trade was carried on 
between the two countries. The level of independence gained by the 
former slaves during the transition to full emancipation was achieved, 
among other avenues, through the development of provision grounds 
and markets where the newly emancipated citizens sold their goods 
(Macmillan cited in Reddock, 1994). There is much evidence to assert 
the belief that slaves could run their own businesses, provide food for 
the population on the estate where they lived, create a monopoly for 
their goods, and make a profit from sales to their master.
Donald Wood (1968) tells the story of Trinidad’s transition from 
slavery and the impact of immigrants on the evolution of the country. 
We get closer to the newly freed black women and their efforts to be 
self-sufficient in Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Women in