Wi, Mi - The Reintroduction
The Trinidad Express published a feature on me recently, and it prompted a lot of messages - mostly from people who didn't know I'd come home, and a fair few who didn't know I'd stopped dancing, and others wanted to know more about what I do.
The article captures something I think is worth saying out loud: The skills that made me a good performer - discipline, communication, adaptability, the ability to read a room and hold a standard - are the same ones that make me a good consultant.
But let me fill in the gaps.
… and use this as an opportunity to reintroduce myself and my current Act.
I retired from treading the boards, as they say, in 2013. For my first Act - I was a professional dancer since graduating in the inaugural class of The Ailey/ Fordham BFA program. I’ve performed work by choreographers like Alvin Ailey, Judith Jamison, and Igal Perry and spent a big chunk of my career in the West End as the Dance Captain for Disney’s The Lion King. Yep, it was an extraordinary chapter; and Yes! It was as cool and exciting as you imagine. And with its unique fabric of cultures and people from across the world - it was even more special and made an indelible impact. But dance demands everything, if you do it properly and at the level I did - your body, your time, your social life - and as I got older, I knew I wanted something different.
What I didn't want was the obvious next step. Everyone expected me to teach. I respect teaching enormously - some of the most important people in my life are my dance teachers - but I knew it wasn't my strength. My strength was always operational: the coordination, the systems, the communication under pressure, the ability to hold a standard across an entire ensemble night after night.
So I pivoted.
Did an MBA. Became a certified Scrum Master. Got the PM certification.
And for Act 2, I spent years working in industries about as different from a stage as you can get: AI health-tech, health-tech software development, hyper-growth music technology start-ups where I built scalable systems entirely from scratch, and one of the UK's leading B Corp and social enterprise law firms. My focus was always the same: growth, operations, people strategy, and making the structures around talented people actually work.
Then the London weather finally got to me, it only took twenty-something years. But - when I realised it was not just a matter of apparel, I packed up - I knew a place where the food is always good, I would be warm all the time, and had more than enough sun.
I came home.
What Is, Must Is. is my Act 3.
I kept seeing the same thing (and previously headhunted to solve) - in London, in New York, and now here in Trinidad and Tobago: businesses with brilliant ideas and the wrong infrastructure to support them. Great people, no systems. Ambition, but no roadmap. Growth that felt harder every quarter, not because anything was particularly wrong with the business, but because the operations, people and mindset hadn't evolved with it.
So, as is my normal fashion - I did something, and thus What Is, Must Is.
It’s a name that always gets a reaction, not what most folks expect a business consultancy to be called - I don’t typically do things because they are expected but because they matter to me.
The name is inspired by my dad, who always said,
“What Is, To Is, Must Is”;
And, it’s also a diagnostic, ‘What is,’ = your current state, ‘Must is.’ = your non-negotiable future. The gap between those two is where I work.
Wi, Mi. is a boutique consultancy working with (primarily) SMEs in Trinidad and Tobago to bring order to ambitious ideas without losing the humanity, creativity, or culture that makes them special. I work with businesses navigating growth, operational strain, or leadership pressure.
What does that actually look like?
It depends on the client.
Sometimes it’s building the operational systems that let a growing business stop running on memory and instinct.
Sometimes it’s designing a people strategy so the founder isn’t the bottleneck for every decision.
Sometimes it’s governance, process improvement, or culture change.
Sometimes it’s leadership support - coaching, a sounding board, executive management.
Often it’s all of those at once - because they’re connected.
The approach is practical, honest, and built around implementation - not just advice. Because recommendations without follow-through are just expensive documents.
Why this matters to me
I was raised to always ask the questions, get all the information, make an informed decision, and therefore, you have no regrets because you’ve made the best decision with the information at hand. That's essentially what I do for my clients now.
When I was fifteen and leaving for New York, my Dad told me: "Take what you need and bring it back to your country."
That's what this is.
I believe that every entrepreneur, every creative, every small business owner with a vision deserves access to the kind of operational support that helps their work thrive. Too often, that support is only available to organisations with large budgets and established networks.
To be clear - large budgets and established networks sometimes need a boutique touch to get back to what they really need.
And what a lot of businesses tend to minimise is that operational clarity isn't a privilege; it's a practical necessity for any business that wants to grow sustainably. The thread that connects your business and connecting everything I've done - from dance to tech to law to consulting - is a simple conviction: you build organisations by investing in people first. If the environment doesn't work, the people inside it can't either.
People are often confused and wonder how a dance career leads to consulting.
The honest answer is that the transition was less dramatic than it sounds.
Dance taught me discipline, communication, ensemble thinking, innovative problem-solving and how to hold a standard under pressure. A production like The Lion King runs on systems - call times, stage management, contingency plans, schedules - all the schedules (rehearsal, wardrobe, makeup), understudy and swing capabilities, technical coordination - the integrated systems are endless. And someone has to make sure all of those systems function every single night, regardless of who's tired, who's injured, or what went wrong five minutes before curtain.
That was my job. And it's essentially still my job. Just in a different room.
Dance gave me joy because it allowed me to communicate without words, to express something physical and emotional, and support performers to deliver their best every show. Now, I'm communicating differently - through systems, structures, and strategies that support people in doing their best work.
What comes next
What Is, Must Is is a boutique consultancy, and I intend to keep it that way.
Small, but mighty.
The value I offer is depth, specificity, and genuine investment in the businesses I work with.
If you're running a business something feels stuck - and growth has started to feel harder than it should, nothing’s getting easier, you’re growing but it’s chaos and firefighting, or you, just, can't quite name it - that’s where I come in.
I'd love to talk.
No corporate theatre. No motivational fluff.
Just honest conversations about business, leadership, and execution.
Because we can. And we should.
take care of you,
ZB.
💬 Get in touch via our contact form on the Home page
or
email me 📧 info@whatismustis.com
