Created: Jun 12, 2023 07:59 AM
Cheryl Packwood recently earned her master of laws in business and finance from Boston University Law School (Photograph supplied)
Teaching international business at Albany Law School in New York, Bermudian lawyer Cheryl Packwood was annoyed when she saw Bermuda listed as a “tax haven” in her textbooks.
“They depict international financial centres extremely negatively,” she said. “I did a little section with the class explaining that it was not all about avoiding taxes. There are other reasons why people use offshore centres. I talked about Bermuda and my experiences.”
Now she is looking for someone from Bermuda to talk to the class about IFCs and their value in business.
“I would like to provide a different perspective, especially in light of the fact that many of these students will work in government positions following graduation,” she said.
Albany Law School, located in New York state’s capital, is known for turning out thought leaders, judges, congressmen and politicians such as former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, journalist Megyn Kelly and the 25th president of the United States, William McKinley.
“I would love to have the Premier, someone from the Bermuda Monetary Authority or a lawyer,” Ms Packwood said. “Otherwise it is hard to counteract the textbook.”
She is teaching a summer session right now.
Ms Packwood has been managing partner of WE Communications in Bermuda, was the overseas representative and director of the Washington DC office representing the Bermuda Government from 2013 to 2015, and was also chief executive of Business Bermuda.
“I am finding teaching both interesting and fulfilling, and also the hardest thing I have ever done,” she said.
She was herself recently a student. On May 21, she graduated from Boston University Law School with a master of laws in business and finance.
When she walked across the stage to accept her LLM from the Dean of Law at the school, she whispered: “I think I am your oldest student.” She just celebrated her 62nd birthday on June 1.
Ms Packwood went back to school purely by accident.
“I initially started in the compliance programme in financial services at Boston University School of Law,” she said. “They gave me a large merit scholarship.”
When she finished that certificate programme in 2021, she learnt that, as a lawyer, she could take credits from her compliance certificate and apply them to her LLM at BU.
“I had an LLM paid for, so I went ahead and finished it,” she said. “I loved going back to school.”
Before she started the programme, she did have some jitters.
“I had a separate meeting with the Dean, just to ask if he thought I was too old to do the course,” she said.
Her age turned out to be an advantage. She earned her first law degree from Harvard University in 1987, so she already knew how to read court cases.
“I understood the issues and I had life experience,” she said.
She felt she got the teaching position at Albany Law School because she was doing her LLM.
When she was younger, she never imagined herself doing a degree in business and finance.
"When I first graduated from law school in the 1980s, the West African Union had harmonised their commercial and corporate law and I wanted to do research and writing about that,“ she said.
Finance did not seem relevant at the time. She also thinks that back then young women were steered away from that arena.
“It was very much a male-dominated world,” she said. “The more I have been involved in the business community and financial services industry and have been taking these classes, it has been fascinating. It is all about how we can find equity in this world.”
She said a lot of what she is learning and teaching has made her question what is going on in Bermuda.
“It makes you rethink everything from independence to our debt, and reparations,” Ms Packwood said. “It all needs to be researched fully.”
She is considering going back and doing her doctorate in law.
“If I do that, my thesis would be about corruption and fraud in the business world,” she said.
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