Theme: Future Proof

The future is not coming. It is here. Future Proof asks us to focus on increasing our resilience for an uncertain future. It asks us to think about what we need to do today so we can plan, prepare and predict the demands of an increasingly complex future. How might we build a future in which we can all thrive? This year we will ask our 9 speakers to explore how we can be future ready- future proof.

Queens Hall Auditorium
1-3 St. Ann’s Road, St. Ann’s
Port of Spain, Port of Spain, 00000
Trinidad and Tobago

Amílcar Sanatan

Poet, Activist, and emerging Caribbean Scholar

Amílcar Sanatan’s promise is to deliver everything in life with slight pepper. He is a Poet, Activist, and emerging Caribbean Scholar whose voice on issues resonates with national and regional audiences. From the “business-suited-elite” to the “slogan-T-shirted-youth” he focuses his penetrating eyes on ways to exchange ideas.

André Bello

Author and Entrepreneur

André is a zoologist turned MBA, and is currently the Caribbean commercial manager for one of the world’s best loved brands, Virgin Atlantic Airways. He is also the founder of GET Inc., a consultancy company that brings together some of the brightest minds in behavioral change and performance improvement.

Bridget Lewis

Co-founded SheLeadsIT

Bridget Lewis, is a creative thinker and leader, keenly focused on social entrepreneurship. In 2017 she co-founded SheLeadsIT, an NGO focused on unlocking economic opportunities for women and girls for thriving positive change in their lives and communities. As a Senior Finance and Intellectual Property and Technology Law professional, with 20+ years expertise, she has worked with large multinational financial corporations, in local and global markets to deliver competitively advantageous business results. She has lead strategy and business development for Wealth Management businesses in the Caribbean, Central and South America, Canada and the USA.

Carla Parris

Entertainment & sports lawyer,

Carla Parris is a vibrant and seasoned entertainment & sports lawyer, talk show host, entrepreneur & content creator. She operates the first boutique law practice in Trinidad and Tobago whose exclusive focus is in entertainment, intellectual property & sports law.

Fitzherbert Glen Niles

Founder and Chairman

Fitzherbert Glen Niles is a father of a child with Down Syndrome who with four other parents created the ‘Down Syndrome Family Network’ to advocate for the value, acceptance, and inclusion of people with Down Syndrome, and equip families with the access to resources, support, and information they needed to help their children to live full and active lives. In seven years he has grown the project into a flourishing network, with free quarterly workshops, skills training sessions for the self-advocates and presentations to parents and other professional attendees. When his son was born with Down Syndrome he felt isolated and taken aback by most people’s lack of knowledge about the condition and lack of support for families during that initial period of acceptance.

Georgina Terry

Director of Business & People Development Associates Limited

Georgina Terry believes her purpose in this life is to assist people with living their lives by developing their businesses and/or careers through desire and design, rather than by default. “I believe, to the core of my being, that when you tap into your passion you will never work again, because work will become PLAY!”, she says. Georgina is the Managing Director of Business & People Development Associates Limited (BPD).

Jessica Joseph

Creative Communications Specialist

Jessica Joseph’s extensive body of work can be read, seen and felt. Her 20 year career in Creative Communications has spanned across roles of Vocal Talent, Creative Director, Branding and Communications Strategist and Pop Culture Anthropologist. The holder of multiple ADDY Awards, she has contributed to notable projects such as the Queen’s Park Oval’s People’s Canvas, Digicel’s Caring Connections in the Eastern Caribbean, and public awareness campaigns for projects under the OECS Commission, USAID, World Bank, EU and UN.

Marlon Darbeau

Designer and Founder of By Making.

Marlon Darbeau is a Designer and Founder of By Making. He comes from a family tradition of making things in a workshop at home or very close to home. He has become very interested in how those traditions intersect with his practice as a Designer, and in using this convergence to formulate ways of making his work. His investigations of the relationship between utilitarian objects, making, people and place, lead to his debut exhibition En Route . . . Of Bridges and Barriers in December 2008, at Alice Yard. A review of which appeared on Smallaxe, a Caribbean platform for criticism.

Michèle Pearson Clarke

Artist

Through her art, Michèle Pearson Clarke evokes thoughtful considerations of the personal and political. Her work deals largely with the everyday moments of ambiguity, melancholy and discomfort present in narratives related to longing and loss. By using archival, performative and process-oriented strategies, she investigates the personal and political possibilities afforded by sharing these experiences and the negative emotions that they produce like disappointment, loneliness, shame and grief.