When the 2017 hurricanes were done blowing the Virgin Islands apart, contractors Elizabeth Nurse and Tyler Rice made a pact to put it back together again, keeping their efforts as locally beneficial as possible. While much of their work focused on repairing buildings, the duo also hoped to calm frazzled nerves and lift trampled spirits through their meditation and yoga studio.
Earlier this month, the Small Business Administration’s Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands District Office honored Nurse and Rice’s company, TLC Unlimited, as Prime Contractor of the Year.
The administration also honored Merchants Commercial Bank as USVI Lender of the Year, and COFECC as USVI Certified Development Company of the Year.
The contracting award “recognizes outstanding performance and impact in federal contracting, celebrating TLC Unlimited LLC’s leadership and contributions to the contracting community in the Virgin Islands and beyond,” according to an SBA statement.
Rice, who was born and raised in the Virgin Islands, said it was far from a solo effort: “This recognition belongs to the mentors, government agencies and especially our hardworking team who made it all possible.”
At a time when federal contracts to rebuild after the storms were, out of necessity, going to mainland companies unharmed by the hurricanes, Rice and Nurse set up TLC to build back the local base of construction expertise and execution. Many of the mainland contractors are unfamiliar with the Virgin Islands’ unique attributes. They import labor where there is already local talent available who know the market better.
“We got into federal contracting work in 2017 after hurricanes Erma and Mari. Particularly, we got involved so we could give back to the island, and it turned into a business,” Rice said. “Our ethos has always been to support the local community, work as much as we can with locals. All of our subcontractors are always local. It’s both islands at the same time — in St. Thomas and St. Croix.”
While getting people to work on reconstructing physical damage to the islands, Nurse and Rice launched a nonprofit called Breathe St. Thomas. While both Nurse and Rice are yogis, their Havensight yoga studio and meditation center is there for anyone interested in taking time out, reconnecting with their breath, and finding a sense of peace. They do a lot of work with children, many of whom were traumatized by the storms.
“We do kids’ trainings there and are also in the public schools bringing mindfulness and breathing techniques to the youth,” Rice said. “That’s always our energy, to put more toward the nonprofit, but now that we have more and more federal work coming on the horizon, we’re pretty busy.”
With fewer private buildings in need of repair, TLC has moved on to government buildings. Their construction projects ongoing in May include courthouses on both St. Croix and St. Thomas, Nurse said.
“It’s obviously different than disaster relief but thankfully we don’t need to work in disaster relief right now,” she said. “A lot of the work we were doing before is already completed and people are back to their homes and back to some normalcy in their lives.”
A big part of TLC’s and Breathe’s existence comes from goal-oriented open-mindedness, said Nurse, who moved to the Virgin Islands two years before the storms.
“We just kept putting it out to the universe that if there was a way to help we would,” she said. “It was just immediately clear when our call had been answered and it gave us a lot of strength and purpose being in the community literally putting roofs back on homes, giving people that sense of safety again.”
She described the whole process as enriching — the construction element, the meditation studio, and personal growth and depth of engagement with a community in need.
“We just feel really full in that way,” Nurse said.
While the meditation studio was always an idea, the hurricanes put a fine point on its need, Rice said.
“We wanted to get a place open where people could have a safe place to land and breathe and gain some tools to make them feel a little bit more grounded and less anxious,” he said.
He hoped that both projects would help inspire young people to get involved in skilled trades like those used in the construction business, and do so with the sort of calm mindfulness found through meditative breathing techniques.
“There’s definitely a shortage, it seems like, of younger people getting into the trade. So that would be the hope, that there’s more opportunity and that we can continuously pick up more subcontractors — and provide even more opportunities for local people in the construction field,” he said. “There’s always construction happening.”
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