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Laos? Where is that? Dr Maurice Rawlins is a Senior Environmental Specialist at the World Bank, where he coordinates the Bank’s environmental programme in Laos, People’s Democratic Republic, Asia. He has over ten years’ experience in policy and strategy development, with expertise in natural resources management, nature-based tourism, climate resilience and climate change policy. While it may seem that his career and life are on track right now, he says it came after struggling academically in secondary school and overcoming low self-esteem. Maurice tells us how he found ‘a sense of place.’

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If you asked anyone about me growing up, they would say I was quiet. I would later define this as being introverted. I wasn’t short on thoughts or opinions but I often lacked the confidence to voice those opinions for fear of sounding stupid. There seemed to be some unwritten rule that boys should not be quiet. Among the unfortunate solutions for making boys less quiet, were teasing, name-calling and bullying. These were part of my life growing up.

My “Tipping Point”

Both parents placed high priority on education and they ensured that they provided everything that was required to excel academically. In secondary school, however, I lacked discipline. I struggled for the first three years at Fatima College. In the third year, I started extra classes (lessons) for Mathematics. I think that’s what Malcolm Gladwell called ‘The Tipping Point’. My Mathematics tutor, Akil, who worked patiently with me for three years, managed to unlock something in me. I eventually started to enjoy going to school, perhaps because I started to see the result of my work. My self-confidence also improved.

‘A sense of place’

I always had a deep interest in the physical world and I loved Geography. Growing up during the Sahelian famine in the 80s, I paid attention to global environmental issues.  I saw early that the world was in trouble. Two Trinbagonian songs from around that time – ‘Mother Earth is Crying’ and “Mother Earth’ have stuck with me to this day and still shape what I do and who I am today.

The title of a Geography textbook, “A Sense of Place” moved me deeply but I wasn’t sure why.  It made more sense during A’ levels when we studied concepts of global scale environmental degradation, large scale poverty and the intricate relationships between the two. “A Sense of Place” became a concept that would help me understand where I fit in the vast world and what I was meant to contribute.

Due to my passion and interests, I had my eyes on the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). At that time, UNEP was the pinnacle of environment and development work and was really the only way that I felt that I could help with the global environmental degradation and poverty challenge. I spent a year after secondary school trying to get into a university in the US but I couldn’t afford it without a good scholarship.

It takes a village

I attended The University of the West Indies (UWI) St Augustine campus instead, studying Environmental and Natural Resources Management with a minor in Electronics. It was there that I met Professor John Agard who later became my mentor and some years later my Ph.D. supervisor. Professor Agard encouraged me to be bold, to think big and to continuously push back against the notion that your ambitions should be small because you come from a small island. He also introduced me to The Cropper Foundation (TCF) which is where I cut my teeth in the environment and development sector. Because of its small staff, working at TCF meant that I was chief, cook and bottle washer for my projects. I developed skills and habits that I currently use at the World Bank. At TCF, I also met two phenomenal women who became mentors for me: the late Angela Cropper and Keisha Garcia. These incredible women helped me to establish benchmarks for professional development.

Dealing with my own shortcomings

I left TCF after a year and half to pursue a Master of Science degree in Environmental Change and Management at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. I was actually aiming for less prestigious universities but Keisha Garcia and Prof. Agard pushed me to apply to both Oxford and Cambridge for post graduate studies.

Months of wrangling with my thoughts

After the master’s programme, I was strongly considering staying in the U.K. to work but was offered the opportunity to do a Ph.D. at The UWI with Prof. Agard as my supervisor.  I took it even though I was unsure that it was the better offer for me. My Ph.D. focused on tropical forest ecosystem service analysis and community-based watershed management planning.

Completing the doctoral degre was a difficult journey. There were many lonely moments as I read through hundreds of journal articles and book chapters, grappled with new concepts, repeated failed experiments, and drafted several iterations of my dissertation. I remember one time after drafting a chapter in the dissertation, my supervisor returned the draft with a devastating comment: ‘this needs to be entirely rewritten’. My confidence was crushed and for a few days I questioned my ability to complete the Ph.D. I eventually got going again and the rest is history as they say.

The journey though grueling was not without its rewards. I got much better at receiving and dealing with criticism and was better able to defend my ideas in a constructive manner. My technical skills also improved through the process. The rigour of the programme helped me to better articulate and more effectively communicate the relationships between the environmental degradation, human activities and poverty. Although I was midway through the programme at the time, I applied to the World Bank’s Young Professional (YP) Programme. It was my Ph.D. topic that helped me secure a place in that highly competitive programme.

We need to find better ways of connecting people

Mentors are key for cultivating aspirations in young people, especially those who aren’t particularly wealthy. The Caribbean diaspora in particular, needs to foster a culture of mentorship, develop a pipeline of mentors and ensure that young people especially from lower income and underserved groups have the tools early to dream without boundaries and develop roadmaps to achieve their dreams. We need to build and scale-up existing mentorship models and experiment with new ones. I have met many inspirational men and women on my journey so I know that role models and mentors are out there. We need however to find better ways of connecting these persons and their experiences to people who need them.

There a several tidbits that I would share with young people thinking about their career path but I will highlight two.

• Start broadly and work your way to something more specific. There may be a number of topics or sectors that you find interesting and these can be good starting points on which to build. It’s good to find out what kinds of careers have been developed in the topics or sectors that you are interested in. LinkedIn is a really good resource for seeing what is out there.  One excellent book I would recommend is Dark Horse by Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas.
• Draft a roadmap to keep you on track. With a sense of where you would like to be career wise, you can start developing a roadmap of actions to get you there. These actions should include building skills and experiences, gaining qualifications, steppingstones etc. Think of the roadmap as a living document, to be adjusted with time as circumstances change and desires may evolve.

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Maurice is a former student of Western Boys’ RC (now Sacred Heart Boys’ RC) and Fatima College, both in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He holds Ph.D. and B.Sc. degrees from The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus, Trinidad in environmental biology and natural resource management studies and a M.Sc. degree from the University of Oxford, UK in environmental change and management. He currently lives in South Korea but still calls Trinidad and Tobago “home”.