IWFTT to honour 3 women for global leadership, impact

Three Trinidad and To­ba­go women, whose work has shaped hu­man rights, pub­lic health and ma­rine sci­ence, will be ho­n­oured by the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Fo­rum of Trinidad and To­ba­go (IWFTT) at its fifth In­spi­ra­tional Women Awards Gala next month.

Rober­ta Clarke, Pro­fes­sor Chris­tine Car­ring­ton and Dr Di­va Amon will re­ceive awards dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny on Sep­tem­ber 29 at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

The awards recog­nise women whose achieve­ments have cre­at­ed last­ing change lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

IWFTT pres­i­dent Lisa Agard said the or­gan­i­sa­tion se­lect­ed this year’s ho­n­ourees be­cause of their com­mit­ment to im­prov­ing com­mu­ni­ties both at home and abroad.

“As we com­mem­o­rate the fifth an­niver­sary of the awards, un­der the theme of ‘The Pow­er of Pos­si­bil­i­ty: Cel­e­brat­ing Five Years of Women Who In­spire Change,’ it is not sur­pris­ing that we wish to show­case these in­cred­i­bly dy­nam­ic and ded­i­cat­ed women who have brought mean­ing­ful change to com­mu­ni­ties at home and abroad,” Agard said.

Clarke will re­ceive the In­spi­ra­tional Cham­pi­on of Women Award for her decades of work ad­vanc­ing gen­der equal­i­ty, so­cial jus­tice and hu­man rights.

A lawyer by pro­fes­sion, she has held se­nior lead­er­ship po­si­tions with UN Women across sev­er­al re­gions and pre­vi­ous­ly served as pres­i­dent of the In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights.

She cur­rent­ly chairs the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence and the Board of the No­bel Women’s Ini­tia­tive. Car­ring­ton will re­ceive the In­spi­ra­tional Ad­vo­cate Award for her con­tri­bu­tions to mol­e­c­u­lar ge­net­ics, vi­rol­o­gy and in­fec­tious dis­ease re­search.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies pro­fes­sor led the COVID-19 IM­PACT project, which es­tab­lished the Caribbean’s first re­gion­al ca­pac­i­ty for rapid whole-genome se­quenc­ing of SARS-CoV-2 and sup­port­ed ge­nom­ic sur­veil­lance across 17 Caribbean coun­tries.

She is now lead­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of the One Health Mol­e­c­u­lar Epi­demi­ol­o­gy and Ge­nomics Cen­tre at UWI.

Dr Amon, re­cip­i­ent of the Emerg­ing Leader Award, is be­ing recog­nised for her pi­o­neer­ing re­search on deep-ocean ecosys­tems.

The ma­rine bi­ol­o­gist re­cent­ly led the first lo­cal­ly led deep-sea ex­pe­di­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, doc­u­ment­ing pre­vi­ous­ly un­known ma­rine habi­tats and species.

She al­so ad­vis­es in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions and the In­ter­na­tion­al Seabed Au­thor­i­ty, on ocean gov­er­nance and con­ser­va­tion.