Celebrating Our Employees - Dianne Dookie Alexander – In Her Own Words

Diane is Heritage’s Manager Facilities and Property Management (FPM) and belongs to the Finance Business Unit. She is based in Santa Flora with her team with whom she has a good relationship. She and her team work across the different Business Units in all areas and so she usually does site checks with her team based on a set schedule.

Dianne notes that while team synergy may be clichéed, it is really the perspective that is the basic description of Team-FPM. She takes pride in her team and for her, it is refreshing to reflect on the strength and talent of her “work family” - Rajish, Stefan, Nisha, Ryan, Anderson, Alvurnna, Alicia and the department’s graduate trainee, Darvin. The disciplines in civil and electrical engineering, project management, designing, and business management are underpinned by the INSPIRE values. The energy and positive attitude continue to result in overall success – whether it is a major retrofit or executing a plan for an event. The atmosphere in Team-FPM encourages Dianne and her team to perform at their best – wherever and whenever. There is excitement, laughter, a readiness to support one another in all spheres. Dianne encourages the lighter side of Team-FPM, which many perhaps may not see – they celebrate each other, team successes and surprise gatherings. She says that while they may have differences of opinions, they are always quick to respectfully address them in what they term their “war room”; this allows for the team to benefit from lessons learned and different perspectives.

Dianne says that the feedback from FPM’s satisfied customers is always refreshing and it bolsters the team’s energy and resilience amidst the very few negative remarks. She said they believe that it is all in a day’s work and take it all in stride. She said that their mission is driven by her small team’s capacity to deliver within cost and scope ensuring functionality by adhering to external and internal requirements to maintain stakeholder satisfaction. The Port of Spain office, Catsill, the Drilling building, Canteen and adjacent common space in the Offshore BU, the Canteen at Santa Flora, the 1st floor of the Administration Building A in Santa Flora, upgrade of lighting to LED, regularizing of AC units and the upgrade of your drinking water systems, are some of the major tasks done while taking on the huge tasks of the Augustus Long Hospital (ALH) project. Planning phases and major milestones are already completed for major strategic initiatives such as the Penal Club and the Santa Flora Pipeyard. Upgrades and retrofits were impacted last fiscal because the imperative was to maintain the guidelines to ensure the safety of all employees.

Dianne’s personal value system and beliefs are consistent regardless of where she is or what her role is. In her words, “I am Dianne, no matter what”. However, it is not all work and no play. Dianne’s home is her sanctuary and she takes the time to do the things that bring her joy and satisfaction.

Outside of work, she is a wife to her best friend and a mother to a physiotherapist and two current university students. She developed a strong passion for cricket because her daughter played both club and under-19 cricket up to 2019 before she migrated for studies. Dianne lives simply so that she can focus her energies on the aspects that matter. She is not one to be led by trends but focuses on the freedom to choose. As a result, she thoroughly enjoys the simple pleasures of daily life – having morning coffee and seeing the sun rise in her little garden, playing scrabble and all fours with her family, preparing meals, mentoring the youths who visit her home, video chatting with her family who she cannot visit because of the pandemic, lying on the floor in her ‘she shack’ (her little Zen house) and most of all getting creative in the funkiest room in her home – her craft bar.

Many at Heritage may know that Dianne is very creative. Creating unique craft pieces is really a source of pure joy for Dianne. She was encouraged by her family to pursue her passion after completing her MBA. The ‘Unique and Imperfect Craft Bar’ evolved in 2016 and along the way there are some really, funny stories but also stories of motivation and courage. She says that underlying the Craft Bar is understanding and appreciating our imperfections that clearly make us who we are as unique individuals with different outlooks, personalities and physical make up. She says that this understanding was driven not only from her Christian perspective but also by her core belief in herself, her confidence and her ability to conquer her fears to be who she wants to be and accomplish anything that she sets her mind to.

For Dianne gift giving is synonymous with excitement. She makes it a personal experience down to the wrapping and creates pieces with words of affirmation and encouragement. According to her, they are “just simple reminders of our sense of purpose and about being loved and blessed”.

Dianne is adamant that she is not an artist but a craftor. She says that she was “terrible at art” in school and still faces challenges with colour palettes. She jokingly adds that this is perhaps the reason why she stays away from makeup. That aside, Dianne describes her craft room as “that awesome hub where the wood burners, mechanical and electrical tools, paints, pens, upcycled material are converted”. So, while she may be known as Manager of Facilities and Property Management, outside of Heritage Dianne has carved out a small and cozy niche for herself. She said it is where she freely creates and where her engineer husband became a joiner/craftsman overnight to help her create her pieces and turn her ideas into reality.

Dianne believes that if we all would take the time to look within ourselves, we would discover that we each have our own unique and natural gift. However, she acknowledges that it can get lost in translation sometimes. She said that this is mainly due to the fact that we hardly ever make the time to complete our self-reflections to truly appreciate the uniqueness we possess. She takes this very seriously and always takes the opportunity to talk to her work team about truly looking at who they are in the mirror, engaging in positive self-talk and getting past the “physical imperfections we are trained by society to see”. She firmly believes that discovering your natural talents and gifts allows for self-discovery about the beauty of our imperfections and what makes us each unique and special to life.

Dianne credits her family and her creative projects for helping her through the pandemic. She was able to use her little space when her nights were sleepless or when she felt a little desperate or nervous, as a means of treating with those emotions. She said that life in the midst of the pandemic definitely helped to sharpen her intuition because she challenged herself to learn new things as a mechanism to keep her focus sharp and to manage and be in tune with her emotions.

Additionally, Dianne acknowledges that although hers is a close-knit family, there were also a lot of positive “take-aways” as a family circle during the pandemic. She admits that the pandemic is still a daily worry that repeats itself; even though her children eventually returned from the UK and Jamaica, she does worry about her family’s safety as well as the safety of her extended family who they cannot visit here at home and abroad.

Dianne is generally not one to share much about her personal life and space. However, she hopes that sharing the aspects that anchor her and provide mechanisms to cope may also provide a plateau of understanding that through the simple things in life, we each can find solace, some joy and avenues to express ourselves during these unpredictable times.