The most effective HR leaders understand that every decision touching an employee carries real weight and that the distance between a good organisation and a great one ultimately comes down to its people. Building a culture where accountability and genuine care coexist requires integrity, business acumen, and the courage to do what is right. Keshala Knowles, Group Vice President of Human Resources at Cable Bahamas Group of Companies Ltd., leads from that foundation, guided by the belief that investing in people strengthens business performance.
A Journey Shaped by Courage, Change, and Leadership
Keshala’s journey into HR began unexpectedly during senior high school, when an HR manager visited her class to speak about careers in the field. At a time when HR was not as popular as it is today, the presentation immediately sparked her interest. She enrolled in a Bachelor’s degree program at the University of Western Ontario and began a career path that would become a lasting passion.
Her evolution as a people leader has been shaped by experiences that required her to push beyond traditional HR responsibilities. Complex employee relations matters, difficult decisions with leaders, organizational change, and periods of leadership transition became defining moments in her development.
These experiences taught her that “leadership is not always about having the easiest answer. It is about having the courage to make the right decision.” That understanding continues to influence how she approaches leadership and the responsibilities that come with guiding people and organizations.
Leading with Humanity and Excellence
As Group Vice President of Human Resources, Keshala believes leaders can lead with humanity and humility while remaining highly performance driven. Caring about people does not mean lowering standards. Strong leaders create environments where people feel supported, challenged, accountable, and empowered to perform at their best. While these can be delicate balances to maintain, true leadership is able to nurture and hold people to account without breaking the individual. It is about having the ability to both “fix and fly the plane” at the same time – addressing what needs to be addressed while continuing to move the organization forward. Leadership requires firmness, fairness and a steady hand that is respected and used as a guiding light, providing both direction and accountability while allowing people the space to grow, recover and perform.
Her decisions are guided by authenticity, integrity, empathy, respect, trust, and excellence. She approaches every decision with an understanding that it has a people impact, while also recognizing that every people decision has a business impact.
Fairness, honesty, listening, and high standards are central to the way Keshala leads. She exudes excellence and expects nothing less from those that work with her while ensuring that people feel both heard and respected.
Connecting People and Business
Keshala views business performance and employee well-being as co-existing priorities rather than competing priorities. A healthy, engaged, and capable workforce is fundamental to sustainable business performance.
Her approach begins with ensuring that HR is deeply connected to the organization’s strategic priorities. Understanding the business, financial objectives, customer, competitive environment, and operational challenges is essential before designing people strategies that create genuine value.
One of the core values that drive the success of Cable Bahamas is “We believe in people” The employee experience, engagement, development, recognition, well-being, and career opportunities are treated as important contributors to productivity, retention, leadership capability, and business results.
A foundational and constant question that drives Keshala’s connection of people and business is, “How do I create an environment where both organization and people win? Her ability to assess situations while answering this question has proven a repeated impetus of her success in the HR industry. Achieving this requires an organizational strategy, data and analytics, and a defined people strategy. The strongest HR decisions are those that are good for the business, fair to employees, and sustainable over the long term.
Her people-centered approach has also been recognized at Cable Bahamas. She received the Heart of Leadership Award for her leadership style and ability to empower teams. She was also recognized with a Leadership Award through the Cable ‘ iNSPIREHER initiative for her empathy, integrity, commitment to people, ability to inspire confidence and encourage others to reach their potential.
Building a Culture of Accountability and Trust
Keshala believes that “Culture is created through what leaders consistently say, do, reward, tolerate, and prioritize.” One of her key priorities has been strengthening leadership collaboration and accountability. Leaders are responsible not only for business results but also for the environment in which those results are achieved.
At Cable Bahamas, every Executive serves as a mentor to an assigned participant in the Leadership Development Program. Executives actively coach, meet with their mentees, and support growth and development that delivers people and organizational outcomes.
She also believes in creating clarity around organizational values, expected behaviors and ensuring that these expectations are reflected across recruitment, onboarding, performance management, recognition, development, and succession planning. The organization’s core values are embedded in recognition criteria and performance competencies.
Trust is built by modeling the right behaviors at every level, from the Executive team to line staff. Communication also plays an important role. Employees need to understand where the organization is going, why it matters, how their work contributes, and what is expected of them.
To this end, Cable Bahamas hosts all-staff meetings where team members across the business and on every island receive company updates and have opportunities to ask questions. At the beginning of each fiscal year, launch events are held to share the organization’s overall strategic direction and ensure there is clarity and alignment on what needs to be focused on and achieved.
Inclusion is equally important. She believes people should feel respected, heard, valued, and able to contribute. A high-performing culture should create opportunities for different perspectives and experiences to strengthen decision-making rather than being defined by who speaks the loudest or is most visible.
Ultimately, culture is built one leadership interaction at a time. Trust develops through consistency, transparency, fairness, and follow-through.
Leading Through Uncertainty
Some of the greatest tests of Keshala’s leadership have come during periods of organizational transition, when there was uncertainty around leadership, structure, people, and the future direction of the business.
These experiences reinforced that employees do not necessarily expect leaders to have every answer. What they need is honesty, stability, clarity, and confidence that someone is paying attention.
At CBL, she stepped into a leadership role during a transition and provided continuity while the organization navigated uncertainty. Her experience, curiosity, leadership mindset, relentless pursuit of excellence, and authenticity had prepared her for the responsibility.
The experience reinforced the importance of remaining calm, listening carefully, making decisions based on facts, and certainty. People watch their leaders closely, and a leader’s tone, behavior, and ability to remain grounded can either create confidence or amplify anxiety.
Change also taught her that resistance is not always a problem to overcome. Sometimes resistance is information. Questioning and understanding the intent in a person’s response can reveal opportunities to improve a change rather than simply force it through.
Developing Future Leaders
For Keshala, leadership development starts long before someone receives a leadership title. communicating consistently. Leadership presence matters greatly during unc She identifies potential by looking beyond current performance and considering judgment, ownership, influence, openness to feedback, ability to operate beyond a current role, curiosity, and the genuine desire and capacity to grow.
In mentoring relationships, she establishes shared ownership of development. The mentee owns their development, while she provides guidance and remains open to learning from the mentee as well.
The recent launch of the Leadership Development Program at Cable Bahamas demonstrates the organization’s commitment to developing next-level leaders. It also reflects shared ownership between the organization and the individual. HR can create the framework and opportunities, but employees must take responsibility for their own growth.
She wants to create a culture where learning is continuous, and people are encouraged to consider what they need to learn next to become the leaders they want to be. Empowering future leaders means recognizing potential that individuals may struggle to see in themselves and investing resources in their development.
One of the most rewarding aspects of leadership for her is seeing someone who has been coached become more confident, capable, and ultimately able to lead others. This is how leadership becomes sustainable.
Responding to Changing Workforce Expectations
Keshala recognizes that the workplace has changed significantly and that HR leadership must evolve with it. Employees are looking for more than compensation. They want meaningful work, development opportunities, flexibility where possible, authentic leadership, recognition, respect, and a positive employee experience. Her leadership style has become even more focused on listening, understanding different perspectives, and learning more about business operations rather than focusing only on HR operations. She does not assume that approaches that worked for one generation or one group of employees will work for everyone.
At the same time, flexibility must be balanced with accountability and business requirements. Being employee-centric does not mean abandoning performance expectations or business objectives. It means creating an environment where people can perform at their best while meeting the needs of the business. At the end of the day, she believes everyone should invest in the success of the business beyond individual accomplishments.
Preparing HR for the Future
Keshala believes the successful HR leader of the future will need to be much more than an HR expert. The role will require business strategy, culture leadership, data-informed decision-making, change leadership, and strong advocacy for people. Adaptability, business acumen, courage, emotional intelligence, technological fluency, and the ability to translate people data into business insight will be defining qualities.
Artificial intelligence and technology will also change how HR operates. She sees the need to embrace technology to improve efficiency and decision-making while remaining intentional about the human elements that technology will never replace.
Her organization is preparing for the future by strengthening leadership capability and exploring how AI and data analytics can support performance management, underpinned by sound data governance. Succession planning and career development are also priorities, with people strategies closely aligned with future business needs. The organizations that thrive will be those that adapt quickly while keeping people at the center of transformation.
Principles That Shape Leadership
A principle her brother shared with her during childhood continues to guide Keshala’s approach to HR and life: “Your attitude, not your aptitude, determines your altitude.” For her, that begins with treating others with respect.
Another important principle is to listen before leading. She avoids assumptions, asks questions, listens to different perspectives, and seeks to understand context and intent with clarity before making decisions. This has become especially important as her responsibilities have expanded and decisions have become more complex.
She also believes in continuous learning. Experience does not eliminate the need for new perspectives, skills, and lessons. Strong leadership is also shaped by having difficult conversations and the ability to make difficult decisions must also be faced with courage. Avoiding them rarely improves a situation, and sometimes the most caring action is having the conversation that needs to happen or making the decision that is right, regardless of how difficult it may be.
For Keshala, leadership is not about being the smartest person in the room. It is about creating an environment where the smartest ideas can emerge. These principles shape her daily decisions through listening, understanding, respectfully challenging integrity, and consideration of longer-term impact.
Creating a Lasting Legacy
Keshala hopes her legacy will be reflected in the people who became better because she led them. Authenticity is a non-negotiable in her leadership. She is fueled by passion, driven by purpose, and grounded in faith.
She wants to be remembered as a leader who cared deeply about people while challenging them to become better. Her vision is to help build leaders who are confident, capable, courageous, and compassionate, as well as an organization where excellence and humanity can coexist.
Keshala’s vision is for her legacy to amplify the impact of HR locally, regionally and internationally, and position the function as a trusted strategic partner; one that employees can depend on, leaders value, and organizations rely on to shape their people, performance, and future. To aspiring HR professionals, her advice is simple: “Learn the business, know your craft well, build the right relationships, remain curious and never lose your humanity.” Policies and processes should never become so central that the person on the other side of every HR decision is forgotten. At the same time, the desire to be liked should never prevent your ability lead with integrity.
Keshala’s leadership journey is ultimately centered on creating impact that lasts beyond her own tenure. When the people she leads become stronger, the leaders she develops become better, and the organization becomes more capable because of her contribution, she sees that as a meaningful legacy.
