Your work can be a sacred vocation

By Klysha Best

A panel of business leaders, a deacon, and an entrepreneur took centre stage at the Cascadia Hotel on June 27 for The Catholic News’ second annual God @ Work business conference, delivering a powerful message to professionals: your work is not separate from your faith—it is a sacred vocation.

The panel, part of a full-day conference themed Fuelled by Faith and Hope: Fired Up for Success 2, featured Neil Parsanlal, CEO of PEAPSL Consultancy Limited; Candice Clarke-Salloum, Corporate Relations Manager for Shell Trinidad; Deacon Hilary Bengochea of Our Lady of Fatima RC Church; and Chelsea Jardim, founder of Dough Bomb Doughnuts.

For Parsanlal, integrating faith into the workplace begins with a simple mantra: “Through Him, with Him, and in Him, for the glory of God the Father.”

“That has helped me to navigate the boardroom, the Cabinet room—everything—through Him, with Him, and in Him,” he told the audience. “My desk is my altar. When I sit with clients, that is where the chair becomes the altar. Because that is where I bring God to people.”

Parsanlal, who has worked in both the corporate and public sectors, said the key to leading with faith is recognising one’s own imperfections while trusting in God’s love. “I know my own imperfections. And even in my own imperfections, my God loves me. I am still the beloved of God in the boardroom.”

Clarke-Salloum shared a turning point in her leadership journey that came 15 years ago while preparing a meeting for a faith-based NGO.

“I wrote out the agenda down to the minute, and the co-foundress of the NGO looked at it and said, ‘But there’s no room for the Holy Spirit,'” Clarke-Salloum recalled. “That was a real turning point in my life, in my leadership journey.”

That encounter led her to embrace the Scripture, “He must increase, and I must decrease,” as a daily prayer.

“I have found that as I consciously and intentionally approach my job as a vocation from God—to lead people to God through good—my entire day becomes a prayer,” she said. “Every meeting is offered.”

She also challenged the worldly notion of upward mobility, introducing the concept of “downward mobility.”

“The world tells us upward mobility—what’s the next step? Where am I going? But actually, leadership for me is the opposite. It’s going down. It’s going deeper into ourselves. It’s finding where God wants us to be and being faithful to that.”

One chance

Deacon Hilary Bengochea, who spent over 20 years in corporate leadership, including as Marketing Director of Carib Brewery, recounted a defining moment early in his career.

“I was a supervisor, and it was Ash Wednesday. My boss said, ‘We are having a meeting in 15 minutes,'” he recalled. He gathered the courage to ask to leave for Mass at 6 p.m.

“He looked up at me, incredulous, and said, ‘Hilary, you can get any wife you wish. There will always be Ash Wednesday services. But you see this job, this supervisory post—this is only one chance.'”

Rev Bengochea chose Mass over the meeting and left. Decades later, he reflected on the Gospel passage where Jesus asks His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”

“Many positions, many persons have said who I am. If I listen to people tell me who I am, I can get very distracted in life,” he said. “Then I have to ask myself, ‘With You, Jesus, who do You say I am?'”

For Jardim, whose doughnut business has grown from a passion project into a company with 30 staff members, the challenges of living out faith in the workplace have been deeply personal.

“I’m not trained for this in any shape or form,” she admitted, describing the imposter syndrome that has accompanied her entrepreneurial journey. “I often find myself very stumbled, and a lot of imposter syndrome in terms of what am I really doing?”

She shared three values that guide her leadership: truth, trust, and responsibility.

“You have to know yourself. You have to be able to stand on your values and your truth,” she said.

On trust, she reflected on the shift from working alone to leading a team. “It’s no more me alone making doughnuts. We have to trust the people in the stores, the delivery driver, the staff in the kitchen. And that’s not always easy.”

Learn from experience

She spoke of the responsibility she feels for her young staff, many of whom come from difficult home situations.

“We get girls, very young girls, in my hands that you’re not too sure where their families are. You hear them talk about their auntie and their grandparents, but very, very rarely do I hear a lot of my young staff talk about mom and dad. Because they’re not there.”

Jardim shared a poignant story of a young employee she had invested in—training, mentoring, and promoting her—only to discover through security footage that she had been stealing.

“I felt super betrayed, but I also felt, what could I have done better?” she said. “I felt responsible for her.”

In her final words to the young woman, Jardim said: “No matter how much you steal, you’ll never have enough.” She urged her to learn from the experience and move forward.

“I think in the workplace that we find ourselves in situations that you want to scream or retaliate, and God is there in that,” she reflected. “He allows things because perhaps in time to come, she will look back and really see the impact she had with us and learn from that and grow from that.”

The panellists also shared practical examples of how they live their faith at work. Parsanlal noted that his consultancy has no sick leave provision, because “if you’re sick, you’re sick,” he said, adding that mothers are not required to take leave to bring their children to the health centre.

“Whether you come in the first hour, whether you come on the fifth hour, whether you come on the tenth hour, you’re treated the same,” he said.

Clarke-Salloum spoke of the freedom she has found in letting go of titles and recognition.

“Whether it’s their title or not, we are all faith leaders. And we’re all called to be that in whatever realm we are, volunteers, in the corporate world, in an NGO, wherever we are,” she said.

The panel discussion was a centrepiece of a day that also included Mass, Confession, Eucharistic Adoration, and breakout sessions on topics ranging from Artificial Intelligence to burnout, offering participants both spiritual renewal and practical guidance for living out their faith in the workplace.