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Jewels of the Virgin Isles: Kanasha S. Herbert

Jewels of the Virgin Isles is a feature series profiling Virgin Islanders in the diaspora who are excelling in their respective fields and/or positively representing the USVI abroad.

In today’s “I want it now” society, the thought that one has to endure many lessons and work hard to achieve his or her goals can seem farfetched to those of a certain age. However, endurance, commitment and likeability are the very things that have helped Kanasha Herbert to make her mark as an attorney and engineer in a rather short space of time.

As the valedictorian of the Charlotte Amalie High School Class of 1995, who holds two engineering degrees and now practices corporate law, it’s apparent that Herbert is no stranger to hard work, but that’s just a part of what helps her to be the woman that she is today. After a conversation with her, it’s clear that a large part of her professional drive and her dedication to her craft as a lawyer is directly tied to the experiences she encountered while growing up in the Virgin Islands.

This St. Thomas native first felt the magnetic pull toward practicing law during her days as a member of the Rising Stars Youth Steel Orchestra. Due to its emphasis on keeping youth off the streets, the program which was run by the then Territorial Court (now Superior Court) provided tutoring services for its members inside the court complex, so Herbert would observe the justice system in progress as she awaited her sessions. “I was keenly aware of the impact that the attorneys had on the families who were involved – either as defendants or victims,” she recalls.

The magnitude of that impact is what led her to a career in law, where she specializes in corporate transactional work, representing a variety of companies both large and small. She counsels entrepreneurs – typically in the high tech, life sciences and energy sectors – on incorporation, general corporate governance and obtaining capital to support their company’s growth.

She also represents venture capital firms seeking to invest in companies and works with companies seeking to publicly sell shares of their stock through public offerings like IPOs. Herbert also serves as a director of MassVentures, a quasi-public venture firm focusing on investing in emerging growth companies in Massachusetts. She was appointed to this position by Massachusetts’s governor, Deval Patrick.

Herbert took an indirect route to becoming an attorney. She graduated from Northeastern University in Boston with a degree in electrical engineering and later a masters in engineering management and worked for several years as a hardware design engineer at Hewlett Packard prior to attending law school.

When asked about her formula for success in her life, Herbert humbly acknowledges that her achievements had less to do with being better than her peers and more to do with her work ethic and personality that drew others to support her efforts.

Although Herbert has lived outside of the Virgin Islands for almost 20 years, it is clear that her childhood experiences in the territory have shaped the things she’s passionate about today. In fact, it would seem that her worlds have collided because she often talks with her business clients about expanding their operations to the U.S. Virgin Islands, and there is always the inevitable question about the crime rate in the islands.

“It’s often a hard question to answer because my clients are reading the same news reports that I am, so they are aware of what’s taking place,” she says. “In a community where everyone is related or familiar with each other, it is baffling that so much crime is unsolved. We have to reduce the rate of crime and recidivism in order for the V.I. to progress,” she says.

Herbert is also passionate about the negative effects on the community because of her own personal knowledge of two young women who lost their lives to domestic violence along with countless other family members and acquaintances who have been impacted by violence in the Virgin Islands. It is this connection that drives her to volunteer her legal services to assist women in domestic violence situations and to work with at-risk youth in the Boston area.

You can hear the urgency in her voice that says Virgin Islanders have a responsibility to curb the violence in the community because their future livelihood depends on it.

Despite these challenges, Herbert loves her birthplace and marvels at the exquisite beauty of the territory when compared to many other tropical locales around the world. She recounts how on a recent trip home she was awestruck by the crystal clearness of the waters.

“It is something that I took for granted for many years, but I visited about two weeks after returning from a vacation in Costa Rica and the difference was just so striking. The USVI really is a beautiful place. I kept asking my mom if she knew how beautiful it was as we drove around,” Herbert says.

She especially is amazed by the transformation that has taken place in Cruz Bay, displaying a balance of rustic living in the midst of development. Home is where the heart is and it’s clear that Herbert has maintained her love for the Virgin Islands, which she has proudly passed on to her teenage son who calls himself a West Indian and counts fungi and peas and rice among his favorite dishes despite being born and raised on the U.S. mainland.

A Nugget for V.I. Youth: “Be kind. There will always be someone better, smarter, prettier or some other ‘er’ than you are so define yourself and your worth as something bigger than being a comparison to anyone else. Be open to new ideas and new experiences and people and things that are different than you are. Failure is an invitation to be better than you were. Embrace your mistakes, learn from them and pivot upward. Laugh a lot too, at yourself and at life generally.”

Little Known Fact: Despite her innumerous trips to Virgin Islands beaches as a youth, Herbert learned to swim as an adult at the YMCA in Boston.
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Loán Sewer is a marketing and tourism consultant and proud Virgin Islander who resides in Washington, D.C. She is also a founding member of the USVI Alliance Inc., an organization focused on reconnecting the Virgin Islands diaspora with the local community and host of the USVI Economic Development Summit on the U.S. mainland. Follow her on Twitter @LoTalksTourism or e-mail her at info@Lotalkstourism.com.

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