08-26-2007
Karen Abrams: marrying sport and scholarship
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If Karen Abrams has her way she may change the outlook of the entire sports fraternity towards the development of sport in Guyana. For much of this year the Georgia-based Guyanese businesswoman and former basketball star has been infecting everyone within earshot with her notion of an altered approach to the development of sport in Guyana that focuses simultaneously on the sporting talent and the academic prowess of the performer.
Karen's chosen vehicle for popularizing the concept of "the rounded athlete" is the Guyana Secondary Schools Basketball Association (GSSBA) an organization which she "invented" out of her own experience both as an athlete and as an accomplished academic.
What she brings to her effort to establish the first ever secondary schools basketball league in Guyana is an acute understanding of the nexus between sport and academia in the American schools and college culture and the particular advantages of seeking to link players with the corporate community. In a Guyanese bureaucratic culture that has become steeped in "discussing issues to death," Karen also has the discomfiting habit of "cutting to the chase," of being concerned about the process but being far more preoccupied with the end result.
Her's, in the Guyana context, is perhaps not always the most endearing disposition, particularly among bureaucrats used to pondering processes and contemplating pitfalls. Her basketball league idea, however, driven as it is by a relentless personal aggression, is beginning to make an impact. She has already "touched base" with the local basketball fraternity and persuaded sections of the corporate and sports communities both here and in the United States to "buy into" a venture which she says can positively alter the lives of generations of young Guyanese to come.
Her own experiences have taught Karen to subscribe to the view that athletic prowess and academic achievement can be nurtured simultaneously with the effect of broadening the range of personal options and creating a fuller life. A St. Rose's High School 'old girl' she honed her own basketball skills among male contemporaries on makeshift courts in Georgetown before migrating to the tougher circuits of the United States. Up until now she remains the only Guyanese woman to have secured a basketball scholarship.
On the other side of the personal development coin she holds an MBA from the University of California and is a partner in a party planning business in Georgia.
Having made several visits to Guyana this year Karen has clearly become infected with the opportunities that she sees in both sports and business and her current preoccupation is with "creating linkages" - linkages between talented and ambitious young Guyanese basketball players and opportunities that abound in the American college system. Her pursuit of the creation of a successful secondary schools league has taken her into the offices of state and private sector officials, and, she says, she has emerged from each meeting, with renewed optimism.
Her interest in Guyana extends beyond her cherished basketball league. Karen says that the concept of networking can also be extended into the realm of economic activity that explores investments in Guyana, joint ventures and technical initiatives that allow for co-operation between local businesses and overseas-based Guyanese that can be mutually beneficial. Her real enthusiasm, she says, is for the development of a strong network between small business ventures in Guyana and modest investors in North America. "Investment," she says, "is not always about millions of dollars. The nature of business in Guyana allows for the injection of relatively modest amounts of capital into small businesses in the agricultural, agro-processing and manufacturing sectors that can actually make a major difference to those small businesses."
Nor does she accept the notion that Guyana is not an investor-friendly country. "While there are clearly hurdles to overcome I believe that the real problem lies in access to regular and reliable information on issues to do with investment opportunities and the investment climate in Guyana. I believe that if we can correct that shortcoming we will see a more positive investor response, whatever the other problems," she says.
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