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Nick Menon and his wife Naeemah with son Kahlil Omar on their Wedding Day in 2003. |
By: Suelika N. Buchanan
Editor-SKNVibes.com
PART 1
(Basseterre; St. Kitts) Nowadays Nick Menon is finding the right balance in his life while juggling various priorities.
He's a father, a husband, and a Director for one of St. Kitts' leading companies, the St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla Trading and Development Company Limited (TDC).
Menon is married to Naeemah Hazelle a Guidance Counselor at the Washington Archibald High School. They are proud parents of Kahlil-Omar their first-born son and recently welcomed their second son Nile-Narayan in Canada. Menon traveled to Canada to witness the miracle of birth.
As he wears many caps and has several demands from his work and family as any normal 37-year-old would. Menon began his family a little earlier than most he takes time out of his demanding schedule to tell SKNVibes what he's all about.
Nicolas Narayan Menon was born in England and grew up in an area North of London, which was an expanding part of the city. He grew up in a white neighborhood, with probably one other Caribbean family along with his.
He attended a basic primary school and did an exam at age 11 which determined the type of school he went to.
He finished that school at age 18 with 10 O' levels and 3 A' levels. As any normal English lad would do, he enrolled at a University in Liverpool where he did his first degree from 1987 to 1990.
He attended University not 100 per cent sure of what he wanted to do but chose areas that he was fond of. He did his degree in Geography with Economics and Information Systems.
"I wanted to do a general degree, which would allowed me to keep options open and I graduated with honors," he said. "I think University should be as well, a life experience more than anything else. It's a place where you'll meet good friends, good connections, networks and contacts as well as learning about yourself."
He found his college experience as one where he became more aware of himself and where he was headed.
St. Kitts Connection:
"My grandparents and my mother are from St. Kitts and I would visit to St. Kitts on vacations from as early as age 4, and have even stayed for six months one time," Menon said.
He did a dissertation on Government preparedness of Natural disasters in St. Kitts for his first degree and during that same year the devastating Hurricane Hugo had hit St. Kitts and Nevis.
"Everyone said that it was because I was studying natural disasters, why it happened," he said smiling.
~~Adz:Left~~He then went on to work at a number of jobs in England after graduating from his University and went into training and development in Liverpool for MST skills training.
There he was basically looking at retooling and "re-skilling" the work force in Liverpool from a traditionally shipping and docking industrial base, to a more service oriented base where he did research and development.
He then went on to work for a National Government in the department of Trade and Industry in Manchester where he worked on the Olympic bid for Manchester in 1992.
He also worked at a City Challenge Regeneration Program, looking at inward investment in particular geographical areas and included small business development.
He also worked for management consultancy firm, in London where he looked at a number of different private public sector companies and organizations and provided strategic consultancies with them, "Which was very exciting for me," he said.
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| Naeemah and Kahlil on their way from Nevis. |
Tragedy Strikes:
In 1993, Menon's parents decided to retire and chose St. Kitts as the perfect place to do so. They also bought some land and built a house where they settled into the Caribbean life with his mother's family close by and visiting form time to time.
In 1994, his father Derrick Menon, his mother's brother, William Herbert and wife along with one or two others went out to sea on a fishing trip to which they never returned.
Menon traveled to St. Kitts as soon as he heard the news.
"It was all a little bit of unfortunate circumstances rather than planned, why I came back to St. Kitts," he said. "It's difficult to put into words when you lose people because you have so much more unfinished business for it being so sudden. And what is worse that is up to this day there is no apparent end to it, up to now, no closure."
Menon said that the tragedy had a major impact on his family because of the many people with different emotional needs and having different reactions to what had happen.
"That was a tricky one for me, trying to keep them all together was tough, but I guess time is a great healer," he said.
Silver Lining in every Cloud:
Menon said that he always believed that every cloud has a silver lining.
"I'm a great optimist," he said. "Things happen for a reason and through that I've come here and been quite successful, I met my wife and had children here, and I've met some good friends."
Menon stayed in St. Kitts for awhile consoling his family and was still working on some projects for a company in London.
It was after he finished the projects while in St. Kitts and with free time on his hand was when he met the former Chairman of TDC Michael King.
"He had a number of concerns and problems with TDC and asked if I mind coming in and doing a short consultancy with him," he said.
Menon looked at a new field for them which was Marketing and this was Menon's specialty, he had experience in this field in England with a number of companies.
Menon did a presentation for the Managers and the Board of Directors of TDC with suggestions that will help them and they were so impressed with his presentation, that he was offered one more job before he was hired full-time as the Marketing Manager.
"I didn't know how long I was gonna be here everything was up in the air and from there I worked and worked," he said.
~~Adz:Right~~In 1995 he went back to England to do his Masters Degree in Business Administration which he did at Cranfield University where he specialized in Strategy.
"Strategy has always been like a second love in work for me, I've always liked planning and execution and those sorts of things," he said.
Menon chose his school carefully and chose Cranfield because of the good reputation it had and how best it could have assisted him.
He believes that it is important that people do research on the schools they attend to ensure their degrees wouldn't become more meaningless.
"So I did a lot of research on management schools and business schools and at the time there were two or three in Europe that also offered a great exchange program with schools in the states," he said. "Because I think business has a lot to do with Culture, we get influenced by the American culture as well, so I did half my degree in UK and half my degree in Boston at Babson which was the original business school to Harvard."
He said that he found the American system of teaching very different form the UK, but finds the exposure and the understanding of the American business very useful.
"And when you're in somewhere like the Caribbean you need the regional exposure and you need the US exposure, and European exposure," he said.
He spent one year doing his Masters which was a very compressed course where the school stimulates a lot of the business pressure from the real world.
"It was very challenging, it was good and what they say about schools with good reputations the caliber of people that will attend would be half the learning force, because you learn from their experience as well," he said.
"I met people from around the world, around Europe, and so on and it was good to be in that melting pot there where you understand that sort of business and business practices from around the world."
Editor's Note: In Part 2 of this exclusive interview with Nick Menon, 'Family Man, Business Man'. He speaks about his "New Opportunities", "Love & Marriage" and his "Life and Onward".
