Shemeon Williams –Founder and Team Lead, Luvo Productions Ltd
Photo credit: Luvo Productions Ltd.
“There are high-paying and respected careers and professionals, but it’s the sector of engineers supported and guided by best practices learned from the multi-nationals and service companies that adopt and improve upon these global standards, that generates much-needed foreign exchange for T&T; and this is unique to this group of professionals”.
Today we focus our lenses inward as we throw the spotlight on a member who is the Founder and Team Lead of our photography partner (Luvo Productions Ltd.), Shemeon Williams.
Shemeon was born and raised in Point Fortin, where the pervasive energy sector influenced his life from quite an early age. Having excelled at SEA to gain admission to his first-choice school (Naparima College), he was invited to take part in Atlantic’s Point Fortin’s Finest, an initiative that offers mentorship, training, and scholarships to the area’s highest-achieving students. Another little-known fact about Shemeon is that dance has always been one of his hobbies. While he has used this talent to support many charitable causes, it was this passion, which in a very circuitous way, led him to discover his innate skill in photography and video production.
Unlike many of his secondary school colleagues, Shemeon never felt inclined towards the medical field, feeling more at home in engineering, perhaps subconsciously influenced by his father, who worked as a Corporate services manager in the sector. This eventually led him to IPSL, where he had ambitions of becoming a senior engineer. Life had other plans for Shemeon, and one fateful New Year’s Eve permanently changed the course of his life.
For a considerable number of us, it’s sometimes decades before our true purpose and passion are revealed; for Shemeon, however, thankfully and not fortuitously, that revelation came after 7 years of working as an Engineer at IPSL. He attributes this sudden shift to his exposure to ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, which prompted him to take 2 actions that would influence his next steps. Firstly, he projected his mind to where he wanted to be at age 60. Secondly, he prioritized what was most important to him; the list read as follows: God, family, himself (hobbies and interests), work, charity. While he identified with his vision in theory, he pensively recalls that he had promised his family he would be home to usher in the new year (2018) but was delayed at the plant, which was at the time involved in a turn-around. His wife’s tearful response to his absence forced him to re-evaluate the priorities he had listed, after realizing that there was a lack of alignment between what he had written on his whiteboard, and what was actually playing out in real life. That episode led him to switch from a career in engineering to entrepreneurship and photography, allowing him to focus on his family in the way he felt was necessary.
Fate seems to have played a role in Shemeon’s life on multiple occasions, and as he left the engineering career behind, the US Department of State was just then hosting a programme called ‘Young leaders of the Americas’ which gave him a chance to learn more about entrepreneurship. Through that experience, he was inspired to help others find their purpose through entrepreneurship, and, in collaboration with the US Embassy, he co-founded the Entrepreneurship Hub (E-Hub). In Shemeon’s words, ‘I like to think of it as a Chamber for micro-entrepreneurs. Today the community has grown to more than 2,000 micro-entrepreneurs, providing workshops and practical support to business owners across Trinidad and Tobago. His work in entrepreneurship has also extended beyond Trinidad and Tobago. For the past two years, Shemeon has served as an Advisor to the Caribbean Development Bank’s Future Leaders Network on Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, Williams contributing to conversations on strengthening entrepreneurship and private-sector growth across the Caribbean.
Having almost concurrently established Luvo Productions Ltd., Shemeon has had the advantage of viewing how multiple sectors function. His career in photography and videography has been split 50/50 between the Energy Sector and Tourism/Weddings and Events. Naturally, he has had to interact with professionals from various local public- and private-sector companies. Of his extensive experiences and interaction, he expressed a deep pride in the energy sector's global standards and excellence. Referring to the way business is done, he categorically considers it “the best-run sector in the Caribbean”. He went on to add, “Trinidad and Tobago needs to diversify, and that can be done efficiently if we learn best practices and lessons from the Energy sector. His association with the Energy Chamber and other key players in the sector has given Shemeon a prized view of numerous business practices which he has tried to adapt and apply to lead and direct the entrepreneurs within the E-Hub. His desire is for them to create another sector, like the energy sector, within T&T’s economy.
Shemeon’s interaction with Atlantic, which started when he was selected as one of the Point Fortin’s Finest, has been an ongoing one. While for many of his peers the association might have been fleeting and momentary, Shemeon has nurtured the relationship and, out of that experience, has come to respect Toni Sirju-Ramnarine as a trusted and valued mentor. He also referred to a period when Atlantic would have asked him back to chat with the Board about the Point Fortin’s Finest Programme. Having access to the industry experts who would have comprised the Board at that time allowed him to chart the steps needed to move him closer to the goals listed above. One of those critical steps was earning a law degree, which he has since successfully completed, supporting his ambition of one day becoming an independent senator.
In reflecting on the ways in which T&T has benefited from the energy sector and the field of engineering in particular, Shemeon expressed it this way “there are high-paying and respected careers and professionals, but it’s the sector of engineers supported and guided by best practices learned from the multi-nationals and service companies that adopt and improve upon these global standards, that generates much-needed foreign exchange for T&T; and this is unique to this group of professionals”.
Shemeon speaks as he lives: carefully, precisely, and purposefully, and his advice to younger persons, based on how his professional life has pivoted, is that ‘there can be no external success without internal success'. Internal success is defining a goal or value system for yourself, and it’s your ability to commit and live in accordance with that system. Then you start making the right internal decisions that lead to the right external decisions. To engineers, I would say never underestimate the power of networking; as an engineer, my world existed within the plant, but there’s a whole other world of networking, marketing, and connecting with people that I only truly appreciated when I stepped into the world of photography.
What brings the most gratification for him is ‘working alongside his wife, creating a space for others to fulfill their talents and being able to give back to the community and Trinidad and Tobago, while doing this.
Shemeon also shared in closing that he has always observed and admired the Energy Chamber, which is ‘such a good example of convening a community’. His driving force continues to be the desire to ‘fulfill the purpose and innate talent for which he was put here,’ and there is an overarching sense of gratitude, awe and respect for T&T’s energy sector which inspires in him a ‘patriotic sense of pride’.