To say The­ma Williams is fa­mil­iar with ad­ver­si­ty would be an un­der­state­ment.

The 29-year-old came to be known in the sport of gym­nas­tics, hard­ly the most pop­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ty with­in T&T shores. De­spite this, she made her way to the world stage at the World Artis­tic Gym­nas­tics Cham­pi­onships in 2011 and 2015 re­spec­tive­ly. The lat­ter ap­pear­ance put her in prime po­si­tion to make his­to­ry as the first T&T gym­nast at the Olympic games.

How­ev­er, her tale took an un­for­tu­nate twist as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gym­nas­tics Fed­er­a­tion (TTGF) opt­ed to se­lect Marisa Dick for the 2016 Rio Olympics in­stead. This led to a le­gal bat­tle, start­ed in May 2016, be­tween her and the TTGF that would see the court rule in Williams’ favour in 2018, award­ing her over $200,000 in com­pen­sa­tion.

Al­most a decade lat­er, Williams is still work­ing on im­prov­ing T&T’s stan­dards in gym­nas­tics through the The­ma Williams Ath­let­ic Acad­e­my, which opened on Sad­dle Road in Mar­aval in 2022.

“I ac­tu­al­ly orig­i­nal­ly start­ed the TWAA in the back of my house. Ac­tu­al­ly, it was in the pa­tio of my house orig­i­nal­ly. And even be­fore that, I start­ed off go­ing to peo­ple pri­vate­ly,” she told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view on Fri­day.

“When COVID had end­ed, peo­ple were ask­ing me, well what’s next? And I think from that point on, I was like, okay, I have to try to fig­ure some­thing else. I in­vest­ed every last dol­lar that I had made in­to this lit­tle set­up at my home at the time. I spent about a year do­ing most of the class­es for my­self, at the pa­tio of my house at the time. It was on­ly go­ing in­to year two, when I de­cid­ed that we reached about 100 chil­dren en­rolled in that lit­tle space. And I de­cid­ed it’s time to move.”

Williams said this prompt­ed an in­ter­net search for a new lo­ca­tion, and even­tu­al­ly she set­tled up­on the cur­rent lo­ca­tion for the gym. Since open­ing, she not­ed the TWAA had re­ceived much more recog­ni­tion.

Williams ad­mit­ted the tran­si­tion from ath­lete to busi­ness own­er has been a chal­leng­ing one, but she stressed that some of the lessons she learnt in the sport helped the process along.

“It was chal­leng­ing be­cause I had to bring in staff. I had to em­ploy peo­ple. And when I’m em­ploy­ing peo­ple, it means I need to train them. So need­less to say, the last three years have been quite ex­haust­ing but 100 per cent re­ward­ing, you know, it took a lot of ded­i­ca­tion. A lot of the traits that I learned through sports re­al­ly car­ried me through that pe­ri­od, that chal­leng­ing pe­ri­od. And as I said, growth con­tin­ues. So every week, every month, every three months, there’s a new chal­lenge. There’s some­thing new to think about, or to add to our idea,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s been

a jour­ney.”

She added, “I feel like be­ing a busi­ness own­er re­quires you just be so many things at once and it’s a con­sis­tent chal­lenge. Es­pe­cial­ly when, as a busi­ness own­er, you want con­tin­ued, steady growth, I feel like there’s no there’s no re­al com­fort zone that you can hit. So for the last three years, I would say it’s been re­ward­ing, but I’ll def­i­nite­ly say there have been a lot of un­com­fort­able move­ments where growth is con­cerned, and a lot of chal­lenges in be­tween.”

Williams not­ed that there were some unique chal­lenges and ad­just­ments she had to make as a woman en­ter­ing in­to busi­ness own­er­ship. She al­so stressed that it was im­por­tant for women to work along­side each oth­er rather than against each oth­er.

“In terms of ad­vice for women, I would say that it’s very easy, and it’s very sim­ple for us as women to pin our­selves against each oth­er. So­ci­ety tends to do that to women, and we com­pete for imag­i­nary spots that don’t ex­ist. I would say that one of the strongest things that you can do as a fe­male is col­lab­o­rate with oth­er women. There’s no force greater than a woman des­tined to rise. I be­lieve that there’s strength in num­bers. So, as women, I think some­times if we lean in more to col­lab­o­ra­tion, I think that we de­fine that the jour­ney is not one as lone­ly and two is not half as dif­fi­cult,” she said.

Williams said her sto­ry has res­onat­ed with the pub­lic and the sup­port she has re­ceived to this day has helped push her along the jour­ney.

“I would say that a lot of peo­ple show sup­port, and there’s still a lot of em­pa­thy, and not on­ly be­cause of the con­tro­ver­sy it­self, but be­cause of the in­jus­tices that con­tin­ue to plague sports al­to­geth­er. So I think it’s some­thing that’s very close to peo­ple, in the sense that they come and they al­ways talk about the sce­nario and like I’m so sor­ry that hap­pened. You’re still our cham­pi­on and what not. So in terms of the em­pa­thy side of things, I think a lot of peo­ple re­al­ly con­nect­ed with the sto­ry,” she said.

Along with peo­ple con­nect­ing to her sto­ry, she said that over the past three years, the gym­nas­tics club has been able to build its rep­u­ta­tion, in terms of the ser­vices that it of­fers, in­clud­ing the coach­ing and the fa­cil­i­ty.

“All of those things over the past three years have im­proved. So it’s not just the con­tro­ver­sy. The con­tro­ver­sy would have re­al­ly sparked the in­ter­est, but I would say the over­all ex­pe­ri­ence at the The­ma Williams Ath­let­ic Acad­e­my has re­al­ly con­tin­ued to im­prove and that en­cour­ages en­roll­ment in the club as well.”

At the same time, be­com­ing a gym own­er has al­so opened her eyes to her role as men­tor to many up-and-com­ing gym­nasts in the coun­try.

“I re­al­ly felt it when the kids who were com­ing in­to the acad­e­my, we did a lot of men­tor­ship and with­in the men­tor­ship, we would have asked ques­tions like, who’s your role mod­el, and so on. And a lot of the chil­dren re­al­ly did say that I’m their role mod­el,” Williams said, “I think that that’s when it re­al­ly, re­al­ly hit home for me that they are eyes, younger eyes look­ing at me as well, and I try my best to be a role mod­el to the kids as well. In terms of my de­ter­mi­na­tion, my com­mit­ment to con­tin­u­ing to strive for great­ness, in terms of adults and young women as well, who may be in­spired by me.”

Williams said this al­so pro­vid­ed an ad­di­tion­al les­son for her and the un­ex­pect­ed turns in her life have helped her to learn how to adapt.

She stat­ed that this along with the var­i­ous chal­lenges with re­gard to gym has made her learn the im­por­tance of know­ing how to piv­ot.

Williams said she would con­tin­ue to look for fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties for ex­pan­sion, but said for now her fo­cus would re­main with the TWAA as she felt it was cur­rent­ly her best av­enue to con­tribute to T&T.