Who is Karen Darbasie?

Karen Darbasie is known for her measured words and calculated decisions. She is a reserved and strategic thinker who commands boardrooms with confidence, preferring data to small talk and results to rhetoric. But mention Christmas or cricket, and the transformation is instant.

CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY: Karen Darbasie at the United Way National Day of Caring. Her eyes light up, her voice quickens, and the composed executive momentarily gives way to someone entirely different—a woman who reminisces about childhood holiday traditions with unguarded warmth, and who speaks of the game with the fervour of a lifelong fan. For Darbasie, there’s one thing that makes both Christmas and cricket truly special—their deep connection to family.



“Who is Karen Darbasie?” Express Business asked the chief executive officer of First Citizens during an interview in the organisation’s boardroom at its headquarters on Queen’s Park East, Port of Spain. Darbasie pauses for a moment, carefully choosing her words. “It’s interesting that when you say ‘Who is Karen Darbasie?’ the first thing that comes to mind is mother,” Darbasie said.

“I guess the question ‘Who is Karen Darbasie?’ goes back to the priorities I’ve set in life—who I am and what I focus on. First and foremost, I am a mother to two young people, Mikayla and Marc, whom I not only love but genuinely like as well; they are truly good human beings,” she said. Darbasie said the second thing that comes to mind is that she sees herself as a “focus-driven professional.

” “And the third thing is that I’m a member of a wider family, one that I’m very proud and happy to be a part of,” she said. Family, hard work, and education have always been the pillars of Darbasie’s life and the foundation upon which her loved ones have built their values. ‘I am a Rampersad through and through” Darbasie’s father is Reynold Rampersad.

“My dad’s parents died when he was very young. He was the youngest of the children, and his parents would have worked as manual labour in the sugar industry as cane cutters. His family pulled themselves up by working hard, studying hard, getting scholarships.

They used education as their means to elevate themselves as a family,” Darbasie said. SUPPORTING GIRLS: Karen Darbasie at the First Citizens’ Girl First Festival. “The brothers looked after each other and helped each other.

His sisters made sure the family unit remained close, as is normal in West Indian life. In West Indian families the whole family pulls together and pulls each one up, one by one, as they moved forward,” she said. Darbasie’s mother is Margaret Rampersad.

“My mom’s father worked in the Warden’s Office in Tunapuna, so my parents worked very hard. The idea of giving 100% to everything you do was instilled in me early on,” Darbasie said. “And work ethic isn’t just about working hard—it’s about the ethic in what you do.

Whatever you do, give it your all and do it to the best of your ability,” she said. Darbasie grew up in Tunapuna, where her maternal grandparents lived, and attended Tunapuna Presbyterian School. She is the eldest of three children, with a brother followed by a sister.

“The life was centred around my grandparents’ home. All of the cousins would gather there after school. It was a great way to grow up.

It wasn’t exactly a country environment, but it wasn’t as built-up as it is now. I remember walking barefoot down to what my grandfather used to call ‘the land,’ where my great-grandmother—his mother—lived. We’d pick graham mangoes from the tree, and plums.

” When she was around eight years old, the family moved to Valsayn. “My parents were both public servants, and both worked very hard their whole lives. My dad and his family built themselves up through education, and I can honestly say I am a Rampersad through and through—strong-willed, hard-working,” she said.

When Darbasie took the Common Entrance Examination, she passed for St Augustine Girls’ High School, affectionately known as SAGHS, following the path of many women in her family. At SAGHS, Darbasie met someone she looks up to even today—the principal, Anna Mahase. FAMILY COMES FIRST: Karen Darbasie with her children Mikayla and Marc.

“She (Mahase) was a very interesting role model for young women—a professional who was highly career-oriented but also nurtured generations of young women entering the workforce. She was an inspiring figure as a woman leader in her time,” Darbasie said, adding: “It’s an example that was also embodied by my mother.” Darbaise inculcated the school’s motto, “Per ardua ad astra”, in her values.

“From hard work to the stars; or, from difficulty to the stars. I think she inculcated that into the girls under her care: work hard, do the best that you can, decide your path, and once you’ve made that decision, work hard at whatever that path is,” Darbasie said. When she entered SAGHS, Darbasie placed eighth the first term.

She said it was a wake-up call for her, as she felt driven to succeed, and eventually worked her way to the top of the class, never relinquishing the reins until she left SAGHS. When Darbasie did the O-Level examinations, she placed third in the country. “I was the second runner-up for the Jerningham Medal Silver, and I came second in the Science Group for A-Levels,” she said.

Darbasie studied Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics for her A-Levels. She received an island scholarship and applied to The University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus. Her parents wanted her to study medicine, but Darbasie said she made a strong case for engineering.

“The way this went is, my father went and got the application for medical school and brought it for me to fill out and sign. I said, ‘I’m not signing this.’ He asked, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ and I replied that I wanted to pursue something more aligned with what I liked—math and numbers.

I told him I was thinking about engineering.” Darbasie said she made a pros and cons list for medicine and engineering, and then she and her father had a discussion about the way forward. “It was his way of making sure I went through a thorough decision-making process that made sense for me, and I conscientiously went through it.

I didn’t see it like that at the time, but I went into engineering, initially planning to do chemical engineering. By the end of my first year, I decided to focus on electrical engineering, specifically telecommunications, and that’s what I did,” Darbasie said. She came third in her class in her first year.

When Darbasie graduated, she finished first in the faculty. After leaving UWI, Darbasie worked at the T&T Telephone Company Ltd (TELCO) which eventually transitioned to the Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT). She spent about nine years at the organisation.

“I’ve always worked. I literally started to work immediately after I left university,” she said. After attending school close to where she had lived for most of her life, Darbasie then travelled to Essex, England, to pursue her MSc in Telecommunications on a Commonwealth scholarship.

“That was a big adjustment. I was young, first time away from home learning to do everything by myself,” she said. Darbasie said that to combat the dreariness and cold of England, she surrounded herself with colour.

“I counteracted it by wearing very bright coats. I had a fuchsia pink coat and an aqua bright blue coat because that’s what I used to lift myself. I’m a Caribbean person; I need the brightness,” she said.

After graduating, Darbasie returned to TELCO. Darbasie said that after a while, she decided to add management training to her engineering background and opted to pursue an MBA. So, she returned to the UK to attend Warwick University and pursue her MBA.

When she graduated, she returned to TSTT. “I decided I wanted to do consultancy, and to do consultancy, I needed to get some finance background. I figured I had the engineering side kind of managed.

Then Citibank called me—they liked engineers with MBAs. I told them I would be there for five years, and I ended up staying for 20,” she said. “I found banking gave me a combination of people interaction because, at the end of the day, bankers are trying to find solutions for people’s financial needs.

So, you have to understand what those needs are, probe to uncover them, and then work with the person or the company to structure what you can do to come up with a solution. I found that combination—of working with people to understand what they were trying to accomplish, while also bringing my technical, numbers-driven side to the equation—just spoke to who I was. I’m a little bit of both,” she said.

Darbasie started at Citibank in January 1994. In 2015, she was appointed the group chief executive officer of First Citizens. She is the first woman to ever hold that position.

She said she still enjoys banking. “I enjoy it. There are aspects of it that feel like work, and there are aspects that are fun.

I know that sounds odd because you may not think banking is fun, but there are parts of it that I enjoy so much. There are also sides of it that aren’t inherently enjoyable for me and require more effort, but they come with the territory. It’s not worth doing if you don’t enjoy it.

You have to enjoy what you do, which isn’t to say you have to enjoy it every second of every day, but you have to enjoy it on balance, and I do enjoy what I do,” she said. ‘I am a West Indies supporter die-hard’ Darbasie said that growing up, her father used to play cricket for the Tacarigua Youth Organisation. “My brother and I used to go with him almost every evening after school while he went to practice.

My brother and I would run around the savannah, playing cricket in our school uniforms because he used to pick us up from my grandparents’ before we went home,” Darbasie said. “And a real jokey story—at one point in time, I had an ambition to be a fast bowler. I had no talent; I must have been around nine or ten.

When we went home, my brother and I used to play, and I loved to bowl because the fearsome West Indies fast bowlers were my idols, even more than the batsmen on the team. And there were great batsmen on the team,” she said. Darbasie then listed some of the West Indies greats: Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, and Colin Croft.

More impressively, Darbasie named some lesser-known spin bowlers who represented Trinidad and Tobago. But she admitted she didn’t have a favourite. “I don’t have a favourite player, but I have a favourite team.

I’m a West Indies die-hard supporter, through and through—win, lose, or draw, I will always support the West Indies,” she said..