Amplify For Good: Spotlight Feature
Lucia Cabrera Jones - Founder & CEO of Women Owned Media and Education Network - W.O.M.E.N.
There is a moment most change-makers know well. The funding falls through. The timeline slips. A partner pulls out. The community you have been pouring into shows up smaller than you hoped. The work that once felt exciting starts to feel heavy. And in that moment, a question arrives. Why am I still doing this?
The answer, for those who stay, is rarely found in a strategic plan or a funding proposal. It is found for a purpose. In the work that you believe has to be done, whether people are watching or not.
Perseverance is often mistaken for stubbornness. But they are not the same thing. Perseverance is not refusing to change direction. It is not holding on to an idea that no longer serves people. Real perseverance is the disciplined act of returning to your mission, especially when the work is inconvenient, underfunded, exhausting, or invisible.
It is within that space that Lucia Cabrera Jones operates. She is not someone who waits for solutions to arrive. She notices gaps. She assesses needs. Then she gets to work.
A Chemical Engineer with a master’s degree in Process Controls, Lucia is the Founder and CEO of W.O.M.E.N. (Women Owned Media and Education Network), an organisation she launched in 2022 after witnessing the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and girls across Trinidad and Tobago.
She watched women lose jobs, opportunities and in many cases, hope. Many were carrying entire households on already fragile foundations. Others found themselves trapped by violence, economic hardship, and limited access to opportunities.
What Lucia saw was potential being suffocated by circumstances. “I wanted to create a space that didn’t just respond to those issues,” she explains, “but actively equipped women with skills, confidence and economic pathways to change their narratives.” That vision became W.O.M.E.N.
Since its founding, the organisation has remained committed to empowering women and girls through education, entrepreneurship, leadership development, and community engagement. But rooted in social impact, the journey has not been without challenges.
What has kept the work moving forward is a commitment to purpose. For Lucia, the reward is not found in awards or recognition. It is found in the small moments that signal larger transformations. It is seeing a woman launch her first business. It is watching someone earn her first income independently. It is witnessing a young girl find her voice and begin to believe in her own possibilities. Those moments remind her that meaningful change rarely happens all at once. It happens in shifts. Quiet shifts that eventually reshape families, communities, and futures.
Part of what fuels Lucia’s commitment comes from her own lived experiences. As a migrant herself, she understands what it means to rebuild your life from the ground up in an unfamiliar place. She knows what it feels like to adapt to a new culture, navigate uncertainty, and create a sense of belonging when the odds are stacked against you.
Those experiences have deeply informed her approach to community work. Over the past four years, Lucia has designed programmes that create opportunities for connection between migrant and local communities. Her work is grounded in a simple belief: community development is not charity: it is empowerment. It is dignity. It is creating systems that allow people to thrive independently.
To Lucia, doing good means being intentional about equity. It means ensuring that opportunities, resources, and support reach the people who need them most. She believes sustainable impact happens when communities are not merely beneficiaries of programmes but active participants in shaping them. “When communities are trained, trusted, and included in decision-making,” she says, “the work continues beyond any project cycle or funding period.” Still, the challenges remain real. Limited resources, emotional fatigue and systemic barriers weigh down efforts. The weight of witnessing hardship up close. The constant task of advocating for social issues in spaces where they are not always prioritised. Even amid those realities, Lucia finds reasons to celebrate.
Some of her proudest accomplishments include watching W.O.M.E.N. evolve from an idea into a structured organisation, building partnerships that expand its reach, and witnessing participants move into entrepreneurship and leadership roles. But perhaps most meaningful are the moments when women she once supported are now in positions to support others.
That is when impact comes full circle. And when does the work become emotionally exhausting? She returns to her purpose. She reflects on what has already been accomplished. She reminds herself that what has been done before can be done again. She rests when necessary. She leans on faith.
“I ask myself why God would entrust me with so much if I were not capable of carrying the mantle,” she says.
Most importantly, she remembers the women who are waiting. The women who need someone to make the first move. The women whose futures may shift because someone chose not to quit. Lucia understands that she is part of something larger than herself—an ecosystem of people committed to creating change.
Looking ahead, she believes more can be done through sustained investment in grassroots organisations, expanded access to skills training, mental health support, and stronger pathways to financial independence for women because real empowerment cannot be built on short-term interventions alone. It requires infrastructure. It requires opportunity. It requires people willing to stay.
Her advice to young people working with limited resources reflects that same philosophy. “Start where you are, with what you have. Be consistent. Stay accountable to yourself and your community. Don’t underestimate small beginnings. Impact is built over time, not overnight.” It is advice she has clearly lived.
Today, success means something different to her than it did a decade ago. Where she once measured it through achievement and recognition, she now measures it through sustainability, impact, and whether the work is creating lasting change in people’s lives.
As a Cuban-Grenadian who has called Trinidad and Tobago home for the past twenty-two years, Lucia also sees the Caribbean’s contribution to the world as something worth celebrating. “The Caribbean brings resilience, creativity, cultural depth, and a strong sense of community to global conversations,” she says. “Our lived experience of navigating complexity while maintaining cultural identity is a powerful contribution to the world.”
Despite the challenges that communities across the region face, there is still much she loves about Trinidad and Tobago. The festive spirit. The music. The food. The way people can disagree one moment and come together at a fete the next. The confidence of Trinidadian women, who carry themselves with pride regardless of age or body type. These are the things that remind her that community is not just something we build through programmes and projects. It is something we live.
A teaching that has profoundly shaped Lucia’s outlook comes from Thinking Into Results, a personal development programme created by Bob Proctor and Sandy Gallagher. The programme centres on the idea that our results often reflect our thinking patterns rather than our circumstances. It challenges participants to identify the limiting paradigms that shape their lives and replace them with beliefs aligned with their goals. It is a philosophy that mirrors Lucia’s own work.
At the heart of everything she does is a belief that people are capable of more than the circumstances surrounding them. Sometimes they simply need the tools, opportunities, and support to see it for themselves. And sometimes, they need someone willing to persevere long enough to help them get there.
