British High Commissioner Victoria Dean is becoming used to the reaction, “Oh, so you are the High Commissioner.”
The typical reaction is one of surprise invariably when people discover the British envoy is a woman. She is the first woman to be sent out to this region in the key diplomatic position.
“It does mean a lot to me [to be the first female in the job] and I am very proud of it and I am glad that I work in a meritocracy where it really did not matter if I was man or woman, or if I was 20 or 40 or 50,” said the 37-year-old.
She told Easy magazine, “I wish I wasn’t the first because it is 2014 and I do sometimes wish that people weren’t so surprised at having a young female High Commissioner.”
But there can be no question that she is up to the task, even though her petite frame and gentle manner of speaking might mask the underlying mettle that drives her performance in a job which makes big demands on her unmistakable ability.
Dean joined the British diplomatic service in 2000 and “was launched into the world of foreign policy-making” with early exposure working for British government ministers, parliament, with Foreign Affairs and “loved it.”
Her first overseas posting was to Paris as second secretary: “Paris is a big traditional classic embassy for us,” she explained, and a “very tricky relationship” for Britain. It was in Paris she said she learnt her diplomatic “craft” in the four years spent there.
She transferred to Brussels from Paris, which saw her working with the British representation to the European Union. Four years in Brussels then off to Washington DC as head of the political team there. She was back in London for three years, before leaving the post of deputy director to take up the Barbados assignment.
Dean said she went to university to study “something I really cared about”. That choice was clinical psychology, because “I am interested in what makes people tick and I am quite interested in education and young people, but I did not want to become a teacher so this seemed to be an ideal fertile area of discovery for me”.
With an interest in diagnosis, she worked in a psychiatric hospital for a short time after graduation.
“I very much enjoyed that but I still felt I wanted to do something else for a little while; like I needed to go and live a little bit and gain some maturity before coming back to psychology.”
However, faced with an opportunity to join the diplomatic service, she seized it.
“My job is to represent British national interest and I am not here to make Barbados a better place. . . . . I am here to pursue British national interest in three particular areas.”
There is the consular duty, of which she said, “We have something like half a million British nationals who visit this region every year and we believe there are about 10 000 British nationals living on the island of Barbados alone. When they run into difficulties, that’s our problem and we need be there to help them and to facilitate them in whatever way we can.”
There is also the area of security “because a lot of the drugs that come through this region are directly targeted at British streets.”
She identified her third area of responsibility as “everything from promoting British firms and British products and trying to get trading out here, to helping in any way we can the improvement of public finances here in the region, which is a real priority given the economic challenges that Barbados and the other countries are facing.”
As Britain’s representative in Barbados and all the countries that make up the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, she is aware of the “historic, deep . . . complex” relationships that have existed between Britain and this region.
Her biggest challenge has been to be as present in all seven countries as she can, something she admits is difficult being based in Barbados.
“We have to think quite creatively about our outreach across the seven states. I have to travel a lot. You can’t get on a plane every time you want to talk to somebody but you have to get on the plane a lot so that you can invest in a relationship.”
For the energetic diplomat there is “no such thing as a typical work day”.
“I could be giving a speech in the morning, hosting a lunch here at the residence, having meetings with my staff, planning events, travelling, lobbying on a particular issue; I could be looking at a consular case; I could be meeting with politicians of the region; I could be spending time with my staff on their learning and development.”
It all draws heavily on her ability to balance the roles of wife, mother and diplomat and she credits her husband Marcus, a lawyer who has assumed the role of stay-at-home parent, for the support.
“I could not do any of it without my husband who has been a full-time dad to our kids and that is what has enabled me to do this job, to have this career. I try to spend as much time with the family as I can. I like to do the school run in the morning; to have breakfast together.
“Reality is I am a wife and mum first and a High Commissioner after.”
Wherever possible, she exposes her children to her professional life, believing it is good for them to meet lots of different people.
At home and at work she is Vikki to staff, from domestic help to senior officers – except in official situations where protocol dictates otherwise.
“I am more comfortable about a relationship where we call one another by our first names and treat each other in a very equal way,” she said.
It is one of the reasons the High Commissioner finds “It is very easy to be happy here in Barbados”.
