Small Business Development Corporation general manager, Ms Michelle Baiyina Khaldun, has been a teenage activist, a banker who negotiated labour deals and an education lobbyist in New York State.

A Muslim, she gave up her college plans to go to the Sudan with her husband when she was still a teenager.

"A lot of people don't know that I am Muslim because I don't cover my head and all that,'' she explained. "I don't choose to do that. Maybe I'm a renegade in that respect but I do practise the religion, the prayer, the fasting and the charity.'' Ms Khaldun converted to Islam shortly after graduating from Berkeley Institute, where she had taken part in student protests aimed at getting black studies put on the curriculum.

Today, you could say she is a Berkeley activist on a different plane. As a member and the treasurer of the Board of Governors of Berkeley, she is involved in planning Berkeley's role in the new education system.

Even more than two decades ago, she was only standing up for what she believed in: The rights and the development of black people in Bermuda. She concedes that was why the Muslim faith was very attractive to her during that period in her life.

Reflecting on decisions and actions she made a quarter of a century ago, she said: "Over the years, I began to really appreciate the broader understanding of Islam and life, and really began to appreciate too, all of us as a human family.'' A year after graduation, she was in New York, just weeks away from entering Howard, when she became involved with a Nation of Islam group which at that time did not believe women need attend college. Instead of going to Howard, she worshiped with the group. A year later she married a Muslim and moved to Africa.

Ms Khaldun noted: "Even in Saudi Arabia, higher education for women is only something recent. A lot of people don't realise that women have a lot of rights In Islam, but that form of pursuit was kept separate. Just the fact that I wasn't going to an all-female institution, it was frowned upon. So I decided not to go.'' If that sounds like male domination, she admitted: "Yeah, I guess so. I would agree. Over the years I've come to see the difference in what are principles and what are man-made, or society-influenced.'' You can't help but notice the Richard Bach quote on her desk which says: "Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.'' Soon after marriage, her husband won a felloship in the Sudan and they moved there, an experience which caused a certain amount of culture shock.

There was no washing machine, and no refrigerator. Fresh food was bought each day in the market.

"A servant would show up to wash the clothes by hand. But you know, it was interesting. Here I was in the West, thinking that I was very much African.

I'm black with African roots. And all of this stuff.

"Yet I get over there and I find myself culturally so far removed.'' Back in her adopted home in Elmhurst, New York, Mrs. Khaldun was expecting the first of her three children while taking courses at Syracuse University.

Fanon, the eldest son, is now 20 and studying political science at Morehouse College and is moving on to law studies. Her daughter, Zuhairah, is 19 and at Columbia University studying economics. The youngest son, 17-year-old Furqan is at Warwick Academy.

As a homemaker, she was active lobbying for better child care services for young children, trying to get funding for the Head Start programme.

She went back to school full time at age 28 at the City University of New York's business school, The Bernard M. Baruch College. She finished with a Bachelor's of Business Administration, finance and investments, Magna Cum Laude.

She won the Wall Street Journal Award, was a member of the Academic Honorary Society, National Honour Society for Business Students and was on the Dean's List. She was voted the most likely to succeed out of her class of 2,000.

In July 1982 she began at Marine Midland Bank on Wall Street as a financial analyst in the financial markets sector. She won an opportunity to get into the management training programme, a year of intensive training run by all money market banks in New York.

"It was six months of academics and six months of going around the banks in the lending areas, doing practical work.

"I was the first woman with children to complete the programme. It was like boot camp. It was like they were trying to break you.

"There were 21 people when we started, all from the top schools. After just three months, ten people were dismissed from the programme. It really introduced me to the real world, the business world.'' She then became a commercial lender on the West Side of New York, lending to the garment industry on 34th Street.

The irony of being a Black Muslim woman dealing with businessmen who were predominantly Jewish was not lost on her but it was never a concern. Her customers taught her about the Jewish lifestyle and "their determination for self-determination''.

"I really learned how to negotiate with them. They were business people so it was never a straight deal. We taught each other a lot.'' Soon after that she was ready to come to home.

Working on 34th Street at One Penn Plaza in the mid-1980s, she found herself having to walk over homeless people to get to the elevator to her office.

"One morning I was sitting at my desk, reading the newspaper and I just started crying,'' she said. "I was overwhelmed because there was nothing that I could do about it. It really affected me seeing people lying in the street.

I felt so powerless to do anything substantial about it. I realised that it was dehumanising me. I was seeing the homeless on the cold hard floor. Just like everyone else, I was stepping over them to race to the elevator.'' By mid-1987, she was working at the Bermuda Commercial Bank (BCB), and by 1990 she was senior manager, corporate banking.

At BCB, she was involved with labour negotiations with the Bermuda Industrial Union, bargaining for the bank. She was ready for another job when the bank opted out of commercial lending. She helped implement plans to downsize BCB's operation, knowing her job would be among the casualties.

After five years at BCB, she became assistant manager, commercial lending at the Bank of Bermuda. During her 15 months there, she was part of a team that helped cement the merger between J.S. Vallis and Butterfield and Company Ltd.

She represented the bank.

She won the bank's President's Award and helped implement a training programme for lenders.

She is now 19 months into the job at SBDC, assisting small business entrepreneurs to be able to present sound, viable business plans. In many respects, working as a commercial lender for so many years was the ideal training for her current position.

She said: "I'm glad that I can use that experience to help entrepreneurs set sound business plans. And sometimes that means asking them to look at that idea again. They may be able to see where the idea is not so feasible after all.'' But she said the SBDC should soon be able to broaden its role. Its capital has been increased from $650,000 to $1 million, meaning it should be able to increase the size and number of its guarantees.