Alana Anderson likes to say she has been a member of the Bermuda National Trust since birth.

Her parents, Henry and Conchita Ming, were heavily involved in the BNT when she was a child, and her father is now a past president.

“I can remember watching the ducks while my father attended a meeting,” Ms Anderson said.

She became involved with the charity in 2008, right after university.

“I thought it would be something really cool to do,” she said. “I got involved with the finance committee and fundraising. Then they asked me to join the central council. I did that for quite a while. I have always really appreciated the things that the BNT does.”

Ms Anderson took on her present role in 2017 and is preparing to step down in June, as per BNT rules. She has already held her seat for longer than the norm.

“I would be happy to remain on the Board if they want that,” she said. “It has been an amazing journey. I have always had a real affinity for culture, whether that is our natural heritage, or built heritage.”

She volunteers here time, while working as a full-time actuary at Sompo International.

“I am very lucky that they give me time to do this,” she said.

Much of her work over the last seven years has been focused on diversifying what has traditionally been a White, ageing membership.

“We just changed our membership platform so it will take a full year of renewals before we have hard data on race, gender, age and nationality,” she said. “But I don’t need hard numbers to know that our membership is not reflective of the population.”

To figure out why more Black Bermudians are not joining, they partnered with Curb in 2022.

During a Curb workshop held last year at the BNT’s headquarters at Waterville in Paget, some people pointed to portraits on the walls.

“They said the BNT is trying to be inclusive, but there are only paintings of White people,” Ms Anderson said.

She and other staff members took the paintings off the walls, right there and then.

“Now our historian, Charlotte Andrews is trying to figure out who the portraits are of, and if they are even Bermudian,” Ms Anderson said. “There was talk of maybe having a revolving art show of Bermudian work in here, but that has not happened yet.”

Pulling in a more youthful demographic is also a key part of the strategic plan, but it is not easy.

Ms Anderson gets a little frustrated when younger Bermudians turn up saying they had never heard of the Bermuda National Trust before.

“This is exactly the demographic we are trying to target,” she said.

One of the lessons she has learnt with the BNT is that history is not static.

“Even with something that happened over the weekend, one person will experience it one way, while someone else has a completely different perspective,” she said.

In 2022, the BNT erected an informative sign at the Spittal Pond Nature Reserve in Smith’s saying it was the location of Jeffrey’s Cave, a hiding spot for an escaped slave in the 19th century.

Someone wrote on the sign with permanent marker, saying that no one actually knows where Jeffrey’s Cave was.

“They were correct,” Ms Anderson said. “We don’t know the actual location. There were any number of houses near there that he may have been living in.”

The shoreline also rapidly changes and erodes a lot in a short time, meaning the cave could very well be long gone.

They changed at Spittal Pond to reflect this truth: they do not know exactly where Jeffrey’s Cave was.

They also recently changed a sign pertaining to Portuguese Rock at Spittal Pond to state that the ship that landed there in 1545, may have been a slave ship.

The BNT is also making other changes on this nature reserve.

“Myles Darrell, head of natural heritage, received a grant,” Ms Anderson said. “We had a planting date there in January.”

One of their goals is to use the money to increase the size of a berm there, created to hold back runoff from the nearby dairy farm.

“We want to ensure that the pond stays as a brackish pond and is not being contaminated,” Ms Anderson said.

Ms Anderson said Bermuda’s history and heritage is a huge advantage for the island.

“Not only do we have beautiful beaches, but we also have this really rich history,” she said. “We have worked with the Bermuda Tourism Authority. We have had people specifically come to Bermuda for a cultural heritage experience, so I know that there is a market out there for historical tourism. I am glad that we can be a part of that.”

Part of the BNT’s mission to check planning applications for threats to the island natural and man-made cultural resources.

“Sometimes we are known as the charity of ‘no’, because we make planning objections,” she said. “We used to just say ‘no’, now we are trying to give alternatives suggestions, like why don’t you built that event space on a nearby brownfield site?”

Climate change and rising sea levels are a real concern to her group, even on a personal level.

Until the BNT built a wall along the water’s edge on the west side of Waterville, water from Hamilton Harbour washed right into the yard during particularly high tides and storms.

“We want to ensure that people know that global warning is not something that is just happening to the polar bears,” she said. “It is happening here. It is part of why your electricity bills are going up. It impacts us daily.”