Dr Marjorie Thorpe breaks glass ceiling at Republic Bank

Republic Bank Limited has announced the appointment of Dr Marjorie Thorpe to the Bank’s Board of Directors. Dr Thorpe is the first woman to be appointed to the Republic Bank Board of Directors in seventeen years.

A graduate of McGill University and Queens University in Canada, Dr Marjorie Thorpe served on the faculty of the University of the West Indies for some twenty years before being named Trinidad and Tobago’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, New York in 1988. In 1992, at the end of her term of office, Dr Thorpe joined the United Nations Development Programme. Between 1992 and 1995 she served as Deputy Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). In 1995 she returned to the region and, until 1999, held the post of Resident Coordinator of the UN System Operational Activities for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean and Resident Representative of the UNDP for the same area.

Dr Thorpe is currently a member of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service Commission. She is a Director of Junior Achievement of Trinidad and Tobago and The Trinidad and Tobago Institute of the West Indies. She also serves on the Project Advisory Committee of the Canada-Caricom Gender Equality Programme in Trinidad and Tobago. Dr Thorpe brings to the Board her experience as an educator and a development practitioner with a strong interest in gender issues. Her publications include articles, conference papers and addresses on Women in Literature; Gender and Development; and Sustainable Human Development. She sees these areas of study as being seamlessly linked. “Literature,” she observes, “encourages us to reflect on the nature of human existence. Its truths can promote the establishment of an order that is more just, more humane, more civilised. This too, is the goal of the development process.”

As the recipient of various fellowships and awards, Dr Thorpe’s tenure of office at the University of the West Indies included appointments as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and General Studies (1983-1985) and University Dean, Arts and General Degrees (1987-1988). She was also part of the team that spearheaded the introduction of Women and Development Studies at that institution and, from 1985-1998, served as the Coordinator of the programme at the St Augustine campus. Dr Thorpe’s appointment took effect on April 1, 2003.