Dodridge Denton Miller

Chancellor, standing before you is a man whose financial leadership shines like a beacon from Barbados across the Caribbean, and as far as New York and London. He has taken a modest Bajan company and transformed it into the largest multinational in the Caribbean. He took a product of colonial Barbados back to Britain, the first Caribbean company on the London Stock Exchange, where they celebrated its arrival! Caribbean money management had come full circle.

Dodridge Denton Miller was born at Cliff, which, as you will recognise by its name is located in the magnificent mountain range in the republic of St. John, the garden parish of Barbados. He describes himself as the middle child of almost a cricket team of 9 siblings, being the younger of a twin batting at numbers 4 and 5. For most of his school days he lived at Knight's Village in St. John, where he came under the formidable and formative influence of his grandmother, who was literally the godmother of the village - a hard-working but warm, generous and nurturing matriarch. His secondary school was Hilda Skeene's Industry High School in St. Philip, and he earned his A levels at the Barbados Community College. From there he joined Pannell Kerr Foster, and wasted no time in passing the ACCA.

After a productive stint with the Barbados National Bank, he joined Sagicor, then the Barbados Mutual, in 1989, at a time when the Mutual Affair was in high gear. And it was around this time that he met our Principal. Now you know, Chancellor, that cricket is often seen as a metaphor for life in the Caribbean. A namesake of mine, Sir William Fraser, writing a biography of the Duke of Wellington, said "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." And I suspect it may soon be said that the success of the Cave Hill Campus was won at the Three Ws Oval.