Global citizen celebrates Canadian citizenship with gift for Caribbean students
March 10, 2020
To celebrate her Canadian citizenship granted last October, a global citizen has created a scholarship program to assist Caribbean students.
Administered by the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, the Dr. Connie Carter Global Affairs Award will support regional students and the Munk School’s recruitment of students from the Caribbean to enrol in and complete the Master of Global Affairs (MGA) degree program.
Leaving Jamaica in 1959, the experienced lawyer, academic and business leader resided in England, Denmark and China before assuming the role of Professor of Law & International Business at Royal Roads University (RRU) in Victoria, British Columbia in 2006.
This is the first time that Carter, who retired from the Canadian university in April 2016, has made a donation to celebrate a landmark event.
“Throughout my life, I’ve made ‘giving’ a habit rather than an occasion,” she said. “But becoming a Canadian citizen and especially getting my new passport within days and with such ease and professionalism was a game-changer. I am really proud to say I am a Canadian citizen because Canada excels at allowing diverse people to live together in an inclusive and multicultural society. It is not perfect, but it’s gentler, more caring and more inclusive than its neighbour to the south.”
The first scholarship will be awarded during the 2020-21 academic year and the number of awards to be given out annually will be based on the amount of eligible applicants received and recommended by the MGA program office.
Through the scholarship, Carter is trying to create or expand opportunities for aspiring young professionals who need an extra hand up the ladder.
“Having been the Program Director for a similar program at Royal Roads University, I understand the doors that the Munk School’s MGA program can open,” she pointed out. “I believe that this extraordinary interdisciplinary degree can become a game-changer in the life of a Caribbean person. I’d like to think that this award will help encourage students to think out of the box and gain confidence in the knowledge that they can navigate most obstacles with creativity and purpose. My motivation is to inspire young people of Caribbean heritage to help encourage them to rise above pettiness that they may encounter. I want to empower them to build a foundation and gain intellectual ballast on which to build their lives.”
Moving to Canada to oversee the care of her late mother -- Carmen Carter-McLeary -- who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s 15 years ago, Carter became familiar with the Munk School through professional and social activities she attended there and the school’s newsletter.
She said the school reminded her of the University of London School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) where she graduated with a PhD in Law in 1999.
“I felt at home when I first discovered the Munk School,” she said. “I understand that the founders envisaged an institution that would help strengthen Canada’s presence on the world stage. As the school’s flagship postgraduate program, I believe Caribbean holders of the MGA degree can put Canada as well as the Caribbean on the world stage. Furthermore, I believe that the character and reach of the Munk School can help provide a safe space where engaged students, scholars, practitioners, public figures and the community at large can conduct nuanced and interdisciplinary dialogue and debate. With the knowledge, solid foundation, navigation tools and confidence that the program helps each student build, the sky is the limit.
“I hope the holder of an MGA degree will want to travel the world to experience other cultures, other ways of life, food, architecture, traditions and so on. I would find it truly gratifying if my award, in its own small way, can contribute to increasing Caribbean presence and professionalism on the global business stage.”
Extensive international travel in the last four decades has opened Carter’s eyes to the world.
“To travel is to live and grow as a human being,” she said. “That I know. Travel forces you to meet people of other cultures at least half way and to learn to empathize in order to get on. Language is one of the keys and I’ve learned my fair share of them. But smiling, kindness and accommodating body language also go a long way. Travelling is about adapting, keeping an open mind, putting people at ease and being able to make yourself and others feel comfortable in any given environment, whether in the presence of a prince or pauper. I have been in the presence of both and everything in between.”
While on a field research trip in Kyuakphyu in western Myanmar in 2013, Carter spent three days in an accommodation without running water.
“My bathroom was equipped with two thermos flasks with hot water, one with cold, a wash basin without plumbing and a pail,” she recounted. “That was physically uncomfortable, but the people I was there to interview made it the most memorable and enjoyable part of my entire trip. Sadly, that part of Myanmar, now closed to foreigners, witnessed nearly a million refugees fleeing to Bangladesh, Their modest homes and kind smiling faces remain etched in my brain.”
With a Bachelor of Education and a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Cambridge, a Teacher’s Certificate from the University of London and a Barrister’s designation from the Inns of Court School of Law in London, Carter married a Dane and relocated to Denmark.
Unable to practice law in the Scandinavian country because of the difference in the legal systems, she switched to communications and flourished by applying her legal analytic skills to corporate and marketing problems.
Carter’s first job in the 1970s in Denmark, where she lived for over 20 years, was in public relations with a high-end consumer electronics company.
“The learning curve was steep, but this is where I learned everything worth knowing about product design and marketing communications,” she said. “In a six-year period, I worked and learned about product management, marketing, branding and design management, including user-interface design before leaving to start my own consulting firm with a two-year retainer contract in my pocket.”
Her first major contract was as a Marketing Communications Advisor with LEGO, the Danish toy company.
“One of our major challenges was defending the LEGO copyright in Hong Kong,” Carter said. “In those days, appeals from Hong Kong courts were to the House of Lords in England. I was proud of the legal package I helped the LEGO company put together, so although I couldn’t practice as a Barrister in Denmark, I used my knowledge of Intellectual Property Law in an advisory capacity.”
Fluent in Danish, she published a book, ‘Dig & Hi-Fi’, that was a bestseller guide to purchasing hi-fi equipment.
After graduating with her doctorate in Law which was the last to be awarded at the SOAS in the 20th century, Carter spent a total of six years in China, first working as a law professor at Xiamen University before being head-hunted to become one of four directors at a German-owned fork-lift trucks manufacturer in Xiamen.
“That was a plum and high-powered job with all the responsibilities and perks that European companies typically offered, especially in those days when being posted to China included ‘hazard payment’,” she said.
Had it not been for her mother’s illness, Carter would have remained in China.
She used her PhD as an entry ticket to come to Canada to supervise her mother’s care and contemplate full-time university teaching.
Sponsored by the British Columbia government in their nominee program, Carter was fast-tracked to take up an appointment as the MBA Program Director, which she later relinquished, and full Professor of Law at RRU.
She said her tenure at RRU was extremely stimulating and satisfying.
“All of my students were well motivated adults, mainly working people aiming to take a second bite of the educational apple,” said Carter who was also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria for seven years. “They were middle managers wishing to get a business degree because for one reason or another, they’d not managed it when they were young. Other students were senior managers, including CEOs and line managers, who wanted an MBA to grow their intellectual ballast now that they were in their 40s and 50s and approaching the height of their careers. I know that the students also enjoyed my classes because my course evaluation scores were consistently very high and our interactions fun and mutually respectful. I played to my strengths and relied heavily on case studies, experiential learning and storytelling.”
Dr. Connie Carter (Photo by Mao Ouyang)
At RRU, Carter won several research awards that allowed her to do field research trips and conferences abroad and become an exceptional scholar known most notably for her work in Comparative Law and Economic Development in South East Asia and China. She also served as a Visiting Professor and Doctoral Thesis Supervisor at educational institutions in Canada, Thailand, France, Japan and Singapore and taught a full elective course – Law & the Development of the Market Economy in the People’s Republic of China -- in the LLM program at the University of Victoria.
“Students, mostly would-be-lawyers, loved the course and so did I since it allowed me to teach Chinese law peppered with real-life examples from my own lived experiences,” the Professor Emerita said.
While leading a busy and successful professional career, Carter is extremely appreciative of the encouragement and support of family members and close acquaintances, including her mom who passed away four years ago and younger brother, Wentworth Carter, who died in a car crash in 1998. He was the youngest person ever to get the real estate certificate in Toronto and set up Wentworth Real Estate before moving to Texas.
Carter-McLeary taught at a Seventh-day Adventist school in Ocho Rios in the 1950s and pursued a nursing career in England before being recruited by Scarborough General Hospital in the mid-1960s. She once owned the building on Bathurst St. that housed the now defunct ‘Contrast’ community newspaper.
“My mom was my biggest hero,” Carter said. “Like most Jamaican women, she was as strong as a lion, street and academically smart, confident, resilient and fearless. She encouraged my brother and I to reach for the stars and she supported whatever dreams and fantasies we produced. My brother was also my hero and had he lived, my life would have been totally different because he would have arranged for the care of our mother when Alzheimer’s slowly took away her mind. My other two heroes are my ex-husband who is still a best friend and my PhD supervisor who is a professor at the National University of Singapore. Both are the two most supportive males that I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. They are both wise, compassionate, non-judgmental, reliable and totally unassuming.”
Though without a full-time job, Carter is still very engaged.
In addition to being a Visiting Professor at a University in Thailand and a Senior Fellow at the Munk School in the University of Toronto, she’s writing a book about coping with Alzheimer’s disease, making presentations at global conferences mostly on Special Economic Zones, evaluating book proposals for a large British publishing house and learning more about how to advise companies about digital privacy compliance, especially in relation to the European Data Protection Law.
“Doing work you like is freedom,” said the new Toronto resident. “Liking what you do is happiness. I must confess that I’m quite happy.”
