A “proud Tri­ni to the bone” vice-pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er of Flow Trinidad, em­bod­ies re­silience, sheer de­ter­mi­na­tion and proud suc­cess, hav­ing com­ing through the ranks in the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­dus­try and ris­ing to hold one of the top po­si­tions.

A S. Joseph’s Con­vent Port-of-Spain alum­na, Mar­tin-Sul­gan shared her jour­ney with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian as In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day was com­mem­o­rat­ed glob­al­ly yes­ter­day with its 2025 cam­paign theme “Ac­cel­er­ate Ac­tion”- a world-wide call to ac­knowl­edge strate­gies, re­sources and ac­tiv­i­ty that pos­i­tive­ly im­pact women’s ad­vance­ment and to sup­port and el­e­vate their im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Hav­ing pur­sued a first de­gree in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions and Eco­nom­ics at Tow­son Uni­ver­si­ty in the US, Mar­tin-Sul­gan then went on to ad­vance her stud­ies in Ger­many and France ob­tain­ing an MBA and an MSC in In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment and Con­sult­ing.

“I be­gan my ca­reer in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions at one of the com­peti­tors (Dig­i­cel) where I worked for over eight years across the Caribbean (Cay­man Is­lands, St Lu­cia, Haiti) main­ly in the mar­ket­ing and com­mer­cial area.

“Af­ter com­plet­ing my grad­u­ate stud­ies, I start­ed my tenure with Ca­ble and Wire­less in 2014 in the Ba­hamas as the vice pres­i­dent of Mo­bile Op­er­a­tions for our sis­ter com­pa­ny BTC (Ba­hamas Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­pa­ny),” the moth­er of two added.

In 2016, she moved to Bar­ba­dos to take up the role of com­mer­cial di­rec­tor and then tran­si­tioned to a re­gion­al role of se­nior com­mer­cial di­rec­tor for one of that com­pa­ny’s mar­ket clus­ters that in­clud­ed Trinidad, Bar­ba­dos, Cu­ra­cao, St Mar­teen, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, Grena­da and Do­mini­ca. Then, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic in 2021, Mar­tin-Sul­gan joined the CWC ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship team as well as be­came the first woman to lead the Trinidad busi­ness serv­ing two roles as both a vice-pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er.

In shar­ing her ex­pe­ri­ences about the tech in­dus­try Mar­tin-Sul­gan de­scribed it as be­ing “pre­dom­i­nant­ly led by men,” and she there­fore, need­ed to es­tab­lish her “po­si­tion around the ta­ble.”

“There were in­stances where it would be as­sumed I ‘couldn’t or wouldn’t’ un­der­stand, the odd oc­ca­sion where things were ‘mansplained’ or that ‘I didn’t know what I was do­ing.’

“This of course, didn’t help with the feel­ings of in­ad­e­qua­cy and in­se­cu­ri­ty that we as women bat­tle when step­ping out­side our com­fort zone. They were by far the biggest chal­lenges.

“Break­ing these bar­ri­ers ex­ter­nal­ly and in­ter­nal­ly were ter­ri­fy­ing but I’m glad I per­se­vered – sig­nalling to those that look like me, you too can as­pire to lead,” Mar­tin-Sul­gan said.

Along the way she quick­ly learned two things. First­ly a leader’s role is not to be the smartest per­son in the room and sec­ond­ly, it’s ac­tu­al­ly a sign of strength to ad­mit when you don’t have the an­swer.

“I’ve sur­round­ed my­self with an im­pres­sive team of col­leagues form di­verse back­grounds, each of­fer­ing guid­ance and ex­per­tise in their re­spec­tive fields. In ad­di­tion, I have the un­wa­ver­ing sup­port of both my di­rect man­ag­er, CWC CEO Inge Smidts, LLA (Lib­er­ty Latin Amer­i­ca) CEO Bal­an Nair, and mem­bers of his ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship team who act as both men­tors and spon­sors help­ing me through my lead­er­ship jour­ney,” she added.

While Mar­tin-Sul­gan’s ca­reer field has been his­tor­i­cal­ly, pre­dom­i­nant­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed, she said, how­ev­er, there has been a sig­nif­i­cant shift to­ward greater in­clu­siv­i­ty.

This pos­i­tive change, she not­ed, re­flect­ed a broad­er com­mit­ment to break­ing down bar­ri­ers and cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for all to thrive and con­tribute.

“As we con­tin­ue to em­brace di­ver­si­ty, we are not on­ly fos­ter­ing a more eq­ui­table en­vi­ron­ment but al­so en­rich­ing our field with a wider range of per­spec­tives and tal­ents, which is es­sen­tial for dri­ving progress and in­no­va­tion,”Mar­tin-Sul­gan added.

On a larg­er scale, she at­test­ed that more women con­tin­ue to break the glass ceil­ing, adding that her com­pa­ny has been en­abling this process across the re­gion.

“I’m proud to say that we are con­sis­tent­ly ad­vo­cat­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ty and in­clu­sion for all. We be­lieve that an in­clu­sive work­force is a pow­er­ful dri­ver of in­no­va­tion and em­brac­ing in­clu­sion leads to a more dy­nam­ic, re­silient and for­ward-think­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion that is bet­ter equipped to meet the needs of our com­mu­ni­ties and cus­tomers alike,” she said.

On a more per­son­al note, Mar­tin-Sul­gan spoke about bal­anc­ing her hec­tic work sched­ule with that of be­ing a wife and moth­er.

“Bal­ance is such an in­ter­est­ing word. In­dra Nooyi, for­mer CEO of Pep­si­Co said work life bal­ance is a myth. And I share that view. It’s about jug­gling pri­or­i­ties and recog­nis­ing we can’t have it all, nor can we do every­thing at the same time.

“We should in­stead fo­cus on what mat­ters most and recog­nise that giv­ing our­selves and those that work for us the flex­i­bil­i­ty of at­tend­ing to our fam­i­lies, when the need aris­es, is the key to suc­cess. Af­ter all, we’re hu­man first and em­ploy­ees sec­ond,” she said.

Mar­tin-Sul­gan al­so had some nuggets of ad­vice for women, in­clud­ing sin­gle moth­ers, try­ing to build their ca­reers in the world of work, while fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties ei­ther from their male peers or per­haps feel­ing over­whelmed due to per­son­al is­sues.

First­ly, prac­tice self-com­pas­sion Mar­tin-Sul­gan stressed.

“The jour­ney will be try­ing and down-right dif­fi­cult at times but do not be­come your own worst en­e­my. Give your­self the same treat­ment as you would a close friend. Progress comes one day at a time but nev­er give up.

“Last­ly, sur­round your­self with those who want to see you suc­ceed. These peo­ple can be male al­lies, friends, and of course fam­i­ly,” Mar­tin-Sul­gan em­pha­sised.

Fu­ture plans

As far as Flow goes, Mar­tin-Sul­gan said the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to ac­tive­ly em­bark on an ob­jec­tive to de­liv­er top class care and ser­vice to its cus­tomers.

“I’m ex­cit­ed about our plans to con­tin­ue to de­liv­er on these to sur­prise and de­light them. For our staff, our main am­bi­tion con­tin­ues to be that Flow should be a great place to work, be it through our em­ploy­ment poli­cies, train­ing and de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes, and fos­ter­ing a cul­ture of in­clu­siv­i­ty and ap­pre­ci­a­tion that make us a great place to work,” Mar­tin-Sul­gan added.

She not­ed her own plans in­clude to keep dri­ving the busi­ness for­ward, im­prov­ing every day as Flow brings its promise to con­nect, care and com­mit to all its stake­hold­ers.