Massy calls for real action on women’s leadership at IWD summit

Massy’s In­te­grat­ed Re­tail Port­fo­lio is step­ping up its push on gen­der equal­i­ty, us­ing its In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day Sum­mit to chal­lenge cor­po­rate lead­ers to move be­yond talk and de­liv­er re­al change.

The Group’s sec­ond IWD Sum­mit, held at the Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty in Mon­trose, Guyana, brought to­geth­er busi­ness and civic lead­ers un­der the 2026 theme “Give to Gain,” ze­ro­ing in on pow­er, pur­pose, and progress.

The pan­el fea­tured Guyana’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Priya Man­ickc­hand, Julie Pace of The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, Massy Group CEO James McLetchie, and Teisha Mil­ner, with dis­cus­sions cen­tred on prac­ti­cal steps to ad­vance women in­to lead­er­ship.

Man­ickc­hand pushed for a shift in cor­po­rate think­ing, mak­ing it clear that the bur­den should not fall sole­ly on women to ad­vance.

Com­pa­nies, she ar­gued, must recog­nise and ac­tive­ly use the val­ue women al­ready bring to the work­place.

Pace, who trav­elled from New York, drew on her ex­pe­ri­ence lead­ing the 180-year-old As­so­ci­at­ed Press, point­ing to au­then­tic­i­ty and in­sti­tu­tion­al sup­port as crit­i­cal to women ris­ing in­to se­nior roles.

“Over time, I re­alised that the thing that made me ef­fec­tive wasn’t how well I could im­i­tate some­one else. It was how well I could be my­self. And there’s re­al pow­er in that.”

McLetchie sharp­ened the con­ver­sa­tion, draw­ing a line be­tween men­tor­ship and spon­sor­ship, and mak­ing it clear which one dri­ves re­sults.

“Lead­ers must use their po­lit­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty to ac­tive­ly open doors and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for women.”

The ses­sion was mod­er­at­ed by Can­dace Ali of Massy Stores Trinidad and formed part of a wider in­ter­nal and re­gion­al push by the Group to em­bed di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion across its op­er­a­tions.

Se­nior ex­ec­u­tives from across the Massy net­work were in at­ten­dance, in­clud­ing IRP head Am­bikah Mon­groo, IRP Guyana lead Troy Be­har­ry, and Peo­ple and Cul­ture SVP Na­dia Mc­Carthy, along­side teams from Massy Stores, Dis­tri­b­u­tion, Gas, and Mo­tors and Ma­chines.

The mes­sage from the sum­mit was di­rect ad­vanc­ing women in busi­ness will re­quire more than men­tor­ship and mes­sag­ing. It will take de­lib­er­ate ac­tion, lead­er­ship ac­count­abil­i­ty, and sys­tems that cre­ate re­al ac­cess to op­por­tu­ni­ty.