T&T Chamber honours business legends

Two leg­ends who have been, and con­tin­ue to be, an in­te­gral part of this coun­try’s busi­ness land­scape, were ho­n­oured when the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­mence host­ed its an­nu­al Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness awards on Thurs­day night.

The re­mark­able ef­forts of George Janoura and Ju­nior Sam­my were recog­nised when they were in­duct­ed in­to the T&T Cham­ber Busi­ness Hall of Fame.

Both men are stal­warts in their own right, mak­ing an in­deli­ble con­tri­bu­tion in the sphere of fash­ion/gar­ment de­sign and con­struc­tion re­spec­tive­ly and so much more.

As Janoura and Sam­my col­lect­ed their awards be­fore the large au­di­ence at the au­di­to­ri­um of Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), it was ev­i­dent that their faith and firm be­lief in God re­mains the cor­ner­stone of their lives and their suc­cess­es as they open­ly praised him for his con­tin­ued grace and guid­ance.

Their fam­i­lies, em­ploy­ees and even their com­mu­ni­ties were al­so ac­knowl­edged as im­por­tant fac­tors in mould­ing their var­i­ous en­ti­ties, with Janoura and Sam­my stat­ing they are both firm be­liev­ers in giv­ing back to the needy through their var­i­ous phil­an­thropic ef­forts which in­clude char­i­ty dri­ves with Janoura be­ing a keen sup­port­er of the T&T Can­cer So­ci­ety and Sam­my do­nat­ing to needy fam­i­lies in his home­town of Rio Claro.

Dur­ing their vote of thanks, both men gave high­lights of the busi­ness ca­reers.

Sam­my shared he en­tered the con­struc­tion in­dus­try un­der the di­rec­tion of his fa­ther at the age of 15 and his quick in­sights en­abled him to ex­pand­ed the busi­ness in­to a gen­er­al con­tract­ing com­pa­ny spe­cial­is­ing in civ­il and earth­works, en­gi­neer­ing, coastal pro­tec­tion, site prepa­ra­tion and foun­da­tions and land de­vel­op­ment.

Three decades lat­er Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors Ltd is a promi­nent name in both the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors.

Janoura re­mains still very ac­tive in the dai­ly op­er­a­tions of Janouras Cus­tom De­sign Ltd and Janouras Ltd.

Lead­ing by ex­am­ple and demon­strat­ing core com­pa­ny val­ues, he said these strong eth­i­cal val­ues con­tin­ue to in­flu­ence all as­pects of the busi­ness.

As the en­ti­ty grows from strength to strength, he not­ed that in­vest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy has built on the skillset of em­ploy­ees and con­tin­ues to in­flu­ence the ease in which they can com­plete tasks which may have been sole­ly man­u­al in the past.

Janoura fur­ther shared that the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to im­ple­ment train­ing on new soft­ware pro­grammes to pro­pel it to the next lev­el.

The Busi­ness Hall of Fame start­ed in 2005 with the posthu­mous in­duc­tion of found­ing mem­ber of the Cham­ber, Joseph Leon Agos­ti­ni. The very first Busi­ness Hall of Fame was a sim­ple cer­e­mo­ny that took place in the Board Room of the Cham­ber’s of­fices.

The award soon out­grew its mod­est be­gin­nings and evolved in­to an of­fi­cial pro­gramme which now in­ducts a max­i­mum of two busi­ness lead­ers at its an­nu­al awards event.

Each year, out­stand­ing in­di­vid­u­als are in­duct­ed (one of whom may be posthu­mous) in­to the T&T Cham­ber Busi­ness Hall of Fame.