Nigel Romano - Chairman

PARTNER, BUSINESS COACHING & ADVISORY SERVICES

MOORE TRINIDAD & TOBAGO, A MEMBER FIRM OF MOORE GLOBAL

Nigel is a Chartered Accountant with extensive experience in public accounting and banking across the globe.  He holds a B.Sc. in Management Studies and an M.Sc. in Accounting from the University of the West Indies, and an MBA from the Jack Welch Management Institute.  He is a Chartered Accountant and a certified Balanced Scorecard Professional.  He started his career with KPMG where he spent nine years in public accounting.  Nigel then joined Citibank in June 1988 as Country CFO in Trinidad & Tobago and left six years later to join E&Y as Tax and Corporate Finance Partner.

Nigel spent fifteen years with Citi in Asia—Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines.  In November 2006 he assumed the role of head of Citi’s Asia Pacific shared services organization (Citi Business Services), responsible for 19 countries, based in the Philippines.  In October 2008 Nigel returned to the finance function in the role of Country CFO and O&T Head for Citi’s businesses in the Philippines where the bank employed over 5,000 staff and generated over US$400MM in revenues per annum from an expense base of approximately US$200MM.  He returned home to Trinidad and Tobago to serve as Sector Head for ANSA McAL’s Financial Sector after which he spent two years in Barbados with the Caribbean Development Bank as Director, Finance and Corporate Planning and Vice President Operations.  Before joining Moore Trinidad and Tobago he was the Managing Director and CEO of JMMB Bank (T&T) Limited.

He is currently the Chairman of the National Flour Mills Limited, the UWI Development and Endowment Fund and the Couva Medical and Multi-Training Facility Limited.

Ronnie Bissessar - Director

ATTORNEY AT LAW 

Fe Lopez-Collymore - Director

ATTORNEY AT LAW 

Fé is an attorney-at-law admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of Trinidad and Tobago (1981) whose career has been focused on the provision of in house legal services across a wide range of commercial activities, particularly property development, insurance and financial services.   For 25 years, since 1992 she held the position of Group General Counsel and Corporate Secretary to the holding company and other member companies of the Trinidad & Tobago based Guardian Group which specializes in financial services.  From 1997 she became a member of the executive team of the group holding company, Guardian Holdings Limited and has served as a director on a number of Guardian Group member companies as well as companies established as joint venture vehicles.  She retired from these positions in August 2017 (General Counsel) and 2018 (Corporate Secretary) and fully retired from the Group on September 30, 2019. She is a past director of the Trinidad & Tobago Stock Exchange. Fé is also a part-time lecturer and consultant on corporate governance and corporate secretarial practices.

Sasha Shillingford - Director

CORPORATE SECRETARY & GENERAL COUNSEL: LEGAL SERVICES, REPUBLIC BANK (BARBADOS) LIMITED 

Sasha Shillingford is an attorney-at-law with over twenty years’ experience. In 2008 she was appointed Corporate Secretary/ General Counsel of Republic Bank (Barbados) Limited, part of the Republic Financial Holdings Group, which has operations in 14 countries.

Dominican by birth, Ms. Shillingford grew up largely between Jamaica and Barbados, and studied law at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. She completed her legal studies at the Norman Manley Law School in Jamaica, and began her career as a Clerk of Courts prosecuting criminal cases. An opportunity later arose to work with a law firm in Antigua, where she developed an interest in commercial law.  This led her to pursue an MBA in London, during which time she worked with a law firm, specializing in Commercial & Intellectual Property Law, with a focus on sports and entertainment.

Upon her return to Jamaica from the UK, Ms. Shillingford went to work with the prestigious and largest law firm in the Caribbean, Myers, Fletcher & Gordon, where she practiced Commercial Law with a focus on Intellectual property. She was later appointed Senior Legal Counsel at the Jamaica Fair Trading Commission, where she remained for 5 years. Critical to the management and management and administration of the organization, she developed invaluable experience in Corporate Governance from the perspective of a statutory body.

Ms. Shillingford made a decision to return to Barbados in 2007, and joined Republic Bank as Corporate Secretary/General Counsel where she has remained since then. Ms. Shillingford is currently part of a 9 member Senior Management Team which steers the operations of the organization, and has direct responsibility for ensuring that the Bank maintains best practice in the area of Corporate Governance. She also holds the post of Chairman of the Legal Committee of The Barbados Bankers Association, and has consulted with The Central Bank of Barbados and CARICOM on numerous legislative initiatives for Barbados and the wider Caribbean.

Marlon Yarde - Director

MANAGING DIRECTOR, BARBADOS STOCK EXCHANGE 

Mr. Yarde is the Managing Director of the Barbados Stock Exchange Inc. (BSE) and the Barbados Central Securities Depository Inc. (BCSDI). 

An Accountant by profession, with over twenty-five years experience he is a member of the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada and the  Caribbean (June 1995), as well as a member of the Institute of Chartered  Accountants of Barbados (May 1996). He became a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados in October 2006. He became a Fellow of the  Certified General Accountants Association of Canada in June 2009 in recognition of the invaluable contributions made not only to the CGA Association but to the   community at large.

 Mr. Yarde holds a Bachelors of Law (LL.B (Hons)) from the University of Huddersfield in the UK (2010). He also holds a Masters of Law (LL.M) specializing   in  Securities Law from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Toronto, Canada  (2013).

DIRECTOR/OWNER, QED CONSULTING LTD

Ms. Salazar is currently Director/owner of QED Consulting Ltd. Prior to starting her company, which is based in Trinidad & Tobago, she acquired a range of experience in the energy and health sectors, locally and in the United Kingdom. Ms. Salazar enjoyed a highly successful career in finance and strategic management before transitioning into governance and organisational development. In addition to being a qualified accountant, with master’s degrees in Business Administration and Strategic Planning, she is also a member of the Chartered Governance Institute (UK), holds certifications in Organisational Development, Change Management and Process Mapping, and is an Accredited Director (Chartered Governance Institute, Canada). Ms. Salazar is a founder member of the Trinidad & Tobago Chapter of the International Women’s Forum, she currently holds the position of Vice President, and is a non-executive director with National Flour Mills Ltd.

Avia Maria Lindie - Director

CEO, METRO OFFICE & COMPUTER SUPPLIES, GUYANA

Avia is the Chief Executive Officer of a 24 year old retail office supplies and document reproduction company. She is a seasoned business professional with over 25 years in leadership and business start-up, with prior experience in the travel and tourism industry and is the holder of an M.B.A from the Australian Institute of Business. She currently serves as Vice President of Alpha and Omega Community Health Associate: a non-profit organization, a Board Member of the Caribbean Corporate Governance Institute, a member of the Rotary Club of Georgetown Central and an OSHA trained personnel. She is the recipient of the Dolphin Award of Excellence from the Rose Hall Town Youth & Sports Club and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry's(GCCI's) Women in Business Award, 2019.

Avia is passionate about empowerment more so women empowerment, corporate governance and creating ethical leaders for the present and the future. 

Robbie Rambarran - Director

Mr. Rambarran has almost 20 years’ experience in the public and private sectors. He is quite passionate about corporate governance and wants to see an improvement in how organisations are led and managed by the board and top management team. He holds a Master’s in Business Administration.

His range of skills include procurement and so he currently functions as a Procurement Specialist on a World Bank Funded Project for the Ministry of Education in Guyana.  Previously, he served at the country’s national hospital in several capacities including acting as the Chief Executive Officer on several occasions. Mr. Rambarran is heavily involved in promoting improvement in the management of sporting bodies and as such has also served as a Member/Director of the Essequibo Cricket Board, Pele Foot Club, Guyana Football Federation, and Guyana Country Co-Ordinating Mechanism - Global Fund Board. 

He is a member of the Burns Memorial Presbyterian Church and has served on the board for many years, holding specific responsibility for finance. At present, he also serves as a non- Executive Director of Biomed Energy Enterprise. 

Ron Sookram - Director

Dr Ron Sookram is currently the Academic Director, Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business, The University of the West Indies (UWI-ALJGSB), Trinidad and Tobago. Ron also serves as the School’s Resident Expert on Corporate Governance related projects and in this capacity leads governance interventions and designs customised governance training for boards of private and publicly-listed companies, state-owned enterprises, civil society organizations and credit unions.

Over his 12 years at the Business School, Ron also served as Director - Client Solutions (2018-2019), Deputy Academic Director (2017-2018), Acting Academic Director (2013-2016),) Director for the Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) programme (2008-2011) and is a senior member of faculty.

Ron is also Team Lead for the recently launched Trinidad & Tobago Annual Corporate Governance Ranking and a former member of the Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards’ National Mirror Committee for ISO standard on corporate governance.

Before joining the UWI-ALJGSB, Ron held the position of Senior Research Specialist –Corporate Responsibility and Sustainable Development- at The Energy Chamber of Trinidad and Tobago. In this role he was instrumental in completing the National CSR Mapping Project of T&T. This project was the first of its kind in the Caribbean.

Ron has published peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on corporate governance, corporate responsibility and cultural history. He is currently a member of the board of directors of the Caribbean Corporate Governance Institute (CCGI).

Kamla Rampersad de Silva - Chief Executive Officer, CCGI

Kamla brings a wealth of experience and a passion for Corporate Governance as she has been lecturing in this field at the MBA level in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana for several years. She is a past board member of the Project Management Institute Southern Caribbean Chapter and so has experience in membership organisations like ours. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of CTS College.

She has several unique skills coming together as her career included being a journalist at the Express Newspapers and the Guardian Newspaper. She has also worked in television and radio. She is trained in change management and is a qualified attorney at law.

After gaining her MBA qualification at the Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business, she took her new found skills and competencies to bring ground breaking change in the public sector by leading the initiative for same day service for delivery of computer-generated Birth certificates in the Registrar General’s Department of the Ministry of Legal Affairs.