Wednesday, March 10, 2010Tomorrow's Business Leaders

Susanna Hennighan-PotterReynard Penn and Kenneth Hodge

REYNARD PENN
Youthful and soft-spoken, Renard Penn is a young lawyer with a promising future ahead of him. Born in New York, Penn moved to the BVI at the age of 10. After graduating from the BVI High School, Penn enrolled at Vassar College, a private liberal arts college in New York State. There, Penn studied for a degree in Science, Technology and Society.

At Vassar, Penn thought he would go into medicine, but a summer internship with a neuro-ophthalmologist in New York changed his mind. But Penn says that there are some similarities between medicine and his ultimate choice, law. “The same thing that appealed to me about medicine appealed to me about law. You are dealing with people and are helping them with a problem. With law, when you apply your mind to a problem you can almost always find a solution,” Penn said.

After college, Penn spent a year working at PriceWaterhouse Coopers. It was during this year that he decided to pursue a career in law. He got his LLB from the University of the West Indies and completed the bar at the Eugene Dupuch Law School in the Bahamas. “I had an American experience and it was good to have a Caribbean experience too,” Penn said. And by studying law in the region, Penn’s courses and projects dealt with the laws of the Caribbean, not the UK.

In 2007 Penn graduated with his law degree and returned to Tortola. He joined Walkers, the offshore law firm, as part of its rotation programme which places just-qualified lawyers in each of the firm’s departments for a few months. Over the past two years Penn has worked in various fields, including litigation, corporate, funds, trusts and estates.

Penn says that he went into offshore law because of the “mystique” about it. He was also drawn to the competitive nature of the field, which he felt would serve as a good foundation for whatever his future holds.

Penn, who is 28, has been surrounded by business for his entire life. His parents, Romney and Margaret Penn, own two hotels on Tortola, a marina, commercial real estate, and an architectural and construction company. “It has given me a taste and feel for the way to negotiate and do business,” Penn says of being raised in an entrepreneurial family. “It has also given me a strong appreciation for the value of money and money management. I have a lot of respect for my parents and what they have accomplished,” he said.

Penn’s parents also instilled in him the value of education: “College was not an option. It was a must,” he said.

Penn is active in several community and professional organisations. He is the treasurer of the BVI Bar Association and is Parliamentarian to the Anglican Church Deanery. He is also a member of the Nurses and Midwives Council.

KENNETH HODGE
Kenneth M. Hodge is not afraid of difficult decisions. Last January the 39-year-old director at Trident Trust Company (BVI) decided to give up his decade-long career at the established company to venture out on his own. “If you have a primary aim for your life, and if you realize that you can’t do it where you are, you have to be brave enough to pursue your dream,” said Hodge, who also previously worked as financial comptroller of the BVI Electricity Corporation.

Hodge left the comfort of steady employment to dedicate himself full-time to several businesses that he and business partner Angel George had established. Trinity Financial Services Ltd., Virgin Gorda Insurance Agency Ltd., Trintek Home Center, and Trintek Computer Store offer a range of services, including fiduciary accounting, technology products, insurance, appliance sales, ship registration, and director services. “We realized that there are niche markets in financial services and that there were other markets we could tap into,” Hodge said.

Hodge was raised on Virgin Gorda by a single mother, Marcia, until he was 11 years old, when she met and married his step-father, Martin Belmar. Together Marcia and Martin have owned and operated M&M Bakery since. Hodge says that his mother taught him the value of hard work: “We learned early on that you have to work for what you want,” he said.

Hodge married his wife, Anne-Marie, in the UK in 1995, and the couple have two daughters, aged 12 and 9. Outside of work, Hodge is active in his church, the New Testament Church of God. He enjoys golf and swimming, and he reads and listens to books by a number of inspirational authors, including John Maxwell (The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership), Jim Collins (Good to Great), David J. Schwartz (The Magic of Thinking Big), Brian Tracy (Eat that Frog) and Napolean Hill (Think and Grow Rich) and of course the Bible.

Hodge graduated as valedictorian from the Bregado Flax Educational Centre in 1986. He attended Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he graduated in 1991 with a degree in accounting and finance. “I believe it is very, very important to realize that there is a bigger world outside the BVI,” Hodge says of the experience going to school so far from home. “I can remember seeing snow for the first time. It was a whole different experience outside the BVI and I met and mixed with people from a cross-section of society. Just being there alone gave me something very valuable – it opens your eyes to competition.”

As for the future, Hodge is optimistic. He acknowledges that quitting a steady job to focus on his businesses in the midst of an unprecedented economic recession is risky, but says “now is the only time you have.” Hodge considers the downturn as the right time to lay a foundation so that when the economy bounces back, he is ready to capitalise on it. “Some people wait for all the street lights to be green before they leave the house. I don’t do that,” he said.

Oyster Publications Inc, PO box 3369, Road Town Tortola, British Virgin Islands, VG1110