“I love being a mother,” says Carla Furlonge-Walker, Marketing Director at Carib Brewery. “It’s been challenging and rewarding.” She strives for greatness every day, both as a mother and as an executive, knowing that it
takes constant vigilance not to let one sphere of her life overshadow the other.
Having worked her way up from Brand Assistant in 15 years, she is unfazed by spending most of her work-day surrounded by men. As a matter of fact, Stag, one of her company’s major brands, proclaims from the rooftops that “It’s a Man’s World.” She’s broken it down to just three simple rules: be confident, be respectful, and be strong.
“I set objectives and give myself timelines, and run towards achieving those objectives.” She counts among her academic achievements an MBA in Marketing from the University of Leicester, yet places more value on the early life lessons she learned at Holy Name Convent in Port of Spain. “I spent most of the formative part of my life there. That’s when I decided who I was and what I wanted to be.”
She sees herself not just as a career woman, but as a career mother, and is well aware of the demands each of these aspects of her existence place upon her. The key, she insists, is finding balance between the two, but there is no single recipe for doing so. “For every mother, that balance is different, and striving for it is a different journey for each of us.”
She is mother to a 12-year-old son, Noah, born to her first marriage. Her first husband died in 2006 from an aggressive form of cancer. It was at that time that her son, then six, took on the mantle of manhood. “He picked me up and carried me. He is the reason I survived.”
Now she embraces the blessing and challenge of raising her late husband’s living legacy to be a good man in these difficult times. When Noah was younger, it was easier to sneak in a little work during mommy-time, but as he grew older, he began to make it clear when he wanted her undivided attention.
“I picked up my son from school, and he sat in the car and held out his open hand. I wondered, okay, does he need money? He said, ‘No, give me your BlackBerry. I need mommy time now. You need to hear about my day’.” That, she recalls, was when she understood that the boundaries between career and motherhood needed to be re-defined. “We try to give our children so many material things, but what they really want is our time. It’s the cheapest and simplest thing to give.”
Spending time with her son is not a chore, but a delight. The best part of her day, in fact, is when the two stand shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen making dinner and chatting. “At that point, I am not the Marketing Director. I am not the career woman. I am a proud mother who has so much to share with my son. And that’s when Noah knows that he is always supported.”
Now re-married, she considers herself lucky once again to have found someone who nurtures her aspirations. “Not many partners would have understood the career path I have taken.” She also thinks it’s vital for children to know why mommy’s career is important, too. “For my son to accept that I am a career mother, he had to understand it, and it had to be a very strong explanation.”
The open lines of communication between her and her son stand her in good stead when it comes to broaching the topic of alcohol use, especially given many of the products she herself markets. She makes sure to make the line between abuse and enjoyment very clear to him, when it comes to drinking, or anything else in life. “You can’t, as a mother, assume your child knows what is right, so you have to take every opportunity to tell them. I tell my son, ‘In life, nobody is going to make decisions for you.
You will have to make them for yourself, and they will either make you or break you. Make sure those decisions lead you in a positive way, and that you surround yourself with positive people’.” Her responsibility extends beyond protecting only her son from the temptations of over-indulgence in alcohol; she and her company are guided by strict codes of conduct governing how and where their alcoholic products are marketed. That way, as a mother and an executive, her conscience is clear that these products are marketed strictly to adults.
She thanks God every day for the gift and honour of motherhood. “I’ve instilled values, and still have a friendship with my son; that’s important to me. My wish for all mothers out there is that they grasp the gift they have been given, embrace it, and enjoy it. It’s what I would wish for any mother.”
