Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

When she was an eight-year-old girl, Rachel Welch-Phillips moved with her fam­i­ly to Cara­cas, where her fa­ther served for close to nine years as a civ­il ser­vant at the T&T em­bassy.

As a stu­dent in an in­ter­na­tion­al school, she de­vel­oped a strong sense of em­pa­thy and sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the cul­tures of her class­mates who were from dif­fer­ent parts of the world.

Look­ing back on her child­hood, it was the most en­rich­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of her life and the be­gin­ning of her path to­wards be­com­ing an ESG (en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial, gov­er­nance) spe­cial­ist. Welch-Phillips de­fined the cor­po­rate term ES­Gs as a frame­work for cap­tur­ing an or­gan­i­sa­tion’s abil­i­ty to ‘do what is right.’

She said, “As I grew up and viewed the world through the lens of my up­bring­ing, I de­vel­oped a grow­ing pas­sion to ad­dress so­cial in­jus­tice in all its forms. It taught me em­pa­thy, which I be­lieve to be the cor­ner­stone of both sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ad­vo­ca­cy.

“Em­pa­thy is the abil­i­ty to recog­nise, un­der­stand, and share in the feel­ings of an­oth­er. Em­pa­thy then en­gen­ders com­pas­sion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, re­spect, and trust, along with a de­sire to take ac­tion in sol­i­dar­i­ty—all of which are re­quired to achieve true sus­tain­able trans­for­ma­tion.”

In 1987, the Brundt­land Com­mis­sion de­scribed sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment as “meet­ing the needs of the present with­out com­pro­mis­ing the abil­i­ty of fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to meet their own needs.” And this is some­thing that Welch-Phillips takes se­ri­ous­ly.

Welch-Phillips pur­sued her un­der­grad­u­ate and mas­ter’s de­gree in En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy, which she then equipped with a Lon­don law de­gree, which in­tro­duced her to the world of law firms. This proved to be a chal­leng­ing road fraught with dis­ap­point­ments that al­most made her re­con­sid­er her fu­ture ca­reer goal.

Af­ter grad­u­at­ing from law school, she need­ed to com­plete a two-year train­ing con­tract with a law firm to qual­i­fy as a so­lic­i­tor in Eng­land and Wales. This was to ex­pose her to four ar­eas of law for six months each be­fore be­ing al­lowed to for­mal­ly reg­is­ter for the roll.

But sub­mit­ting 21 ap­pli­ca­tions for the train­ing po­si­tion proved fu­tile.

“I re­ceived 19 re­jec­tions in quick suc­ces­sion—the 20th re­sponse was a wait-list no­ti­fi­ca­tion, and then the 21st was ra­dio si­lence. Pan­ic set in as I re­alised I would need to re­think my plan for the next two years—if I wasn’t go­ing to be­come a so­lic­i­tor, what would I be?” Welch-Phillips said.

Fol­low­ing blow af­ter blow to these at­tempts, she spent two weeks in “tur­moil” cal­cu­lat­ing what her next move should be. How­ev­er, dur­ing this time, and un­be­knownst to her, the 21st law firm was con­sid­er­ing her for the po­si­tion. What came next im­pact­ed her life with in­cred­i­ble out­comes.

“The 21st law firm reached out and in­vit­ed me for an in­ter­view—I end­ed up work­ing there for six years, and it was the most valu­able train­ing and de­vel­op­men­tal ex­pe­ri­ence of my ca­reer,” Welch-Phillips said. 

“I don’t car­ry fail­ures with me. They be­come valu­able lessons and life ex­pe­ri­ences that shape who I am. My fa­ther al­ways told me that if he want­ed to mo­ti­vate me to achieve some­thing, he would sug­gest to me that I couldn’t do it. The first time this hap­pened I was two and de­ter­mined to learn to tie my shoelaces. He told me it was too hard, so I went to my room and worked on it un­til I marched back in­to the liv­ing room with tied shoes.”

To­day, her am­bi­tious­ness is cen­tred on the fruit­ful de­vel­op­ment of her fam­i­ly. She is a wife and the moth­er of five-year-old Ma­ia Rose and three-year-old Levi. “Every de­ci­sion I make is about leav­ing the world a bet­ter place for them. I live for their hap­pi­ness, suc­cess and pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to the world at large,” Welch-Phillips said.

As an ESG (en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial, gov­er­nance) spe­cial­ist, Rachel Welch-Phillips, who was ap­point­ed the Head of Le­gal and Com­pli­ance for the Bank­ing Sec­tor of the ANSA McAL Group in March, is in charge of the man­ag­ing and op­er­a­tion of the le­gal func­tion across ANSA Mer­chant Bank Lim­it­ed, ANSA Mer­chant Bank Bar­ba­dos Lim­it­ed and ANSA Bank Lim­it­ed.