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How a Jamaican Founder Is Building a Black-Owned Investment Firm for the Caribbean — From a 15-Year Plan Written at Age 15 to a One-Way Ticket to Jamaica
David Mullings mapped out his life in five-year blocks as…
How a Caymanian Founder Built a 12+ Country Organic Feminine Care Brand With No Investors and No Blueprint
Melesia Adderley couldn't find organic feminine care products in the…
Guyana’s Oil Boom Is Creating a New Economy Around the Oil
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Butterfield Is Buying CIBC Caribbean. The Bigger Question Is What Happens Next
Caribbean banking has spent decades being shaped by institutions headquartered outside the region. Now, one…
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One Caribbean founder built the region’s first remote work conference from scratch. 7,000 people showed up. Nobody in government planned for that.
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Diaspora
A Jamaican-Canadian Woman Built One of Maryland’s Most Celebrated Luxury Retreats
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Caribbean banking has spent decades being shaped by institutions headquartered outside the region. Now, one of those institutions is changing…
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Lisa Brown Alexander didn't have a hospitality background. She had something more useful: a lifetime of staying in luxury hotels…
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We Are Building Someone Else’s Digital Economy
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How a Jamaican Founder Is Building a Black-Owned Investment Firm for the Caribbean — From a 15-Year Plan Written at Age 15 to a One-Way Ticket to Jamaica
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The Foundpreneur Podcast
The Caribbean has been building world-class businesses for decades. Nobody covered it properly. Until now.
The Foundpreneur Podcast is a weekly conversation series hosted by Caribbean journalist and media founder Stephen Stanberry. Every episode goes deep with founders from across the Caribbean and its diaspora, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Trinidad, Barbados, Cayman Islands, and beyond unpacking the real story behind the build.
No hype. No overnight success myths. Just honest conversations about what it actually takes to build a business in this region the strategies, the setbacks, and the wins that never made the mainstream business press.
New episodes every week. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
Keithlin Caroo-Afrifa grew up in Faux, a rural farming community in St. Lucia, surrounded by women who fed families and sustained the land, with almost none of them ever formally recognized for it.
She left for university, earned her dream job at the United Nations, and then hit a wall. Sitting inside global policy at the UN, she realized she wasn’t actually helping the woman who raised her, or St. Lucia, or the Caribbean at all.
So she started Helen’s Daughters off the side of her desk, using her own time and her own money, while still working full-time at the UN.
Today, Helen’s Daughters operates across five Caribbean countries, has trained over 6,000 women through its Academy, and has been featured by Forbes, the BBC, and National Geographic. Keithlin holds an MBE and is the youngest and first Afro-Caribbean Goodwill Ambassador, and she’s now working to convert one of the Caribbean’s most recognized nonprofits into a social enterprise.
In this episode, Keithlin talks about:
◼ Why the UN’s “meritocracy” wasn’t actually equal for people from small island states
◼ Why she uses the word “farmHERs” instead of farmers, and the real story behind it
◼ The moment she almost gave up when the grants and fellowships weren’t coming
◼ How Helen’s Daughters expanded into five Caribbean countries using country coordinators instead of trying to be everywhere herself
◼ What building this organization has actually cost her, personally
◼ Founder’s Final Five: the one policy change that would help women farmers most, the biggest untapped business opportunity in Caribbean agriculture, and the uncomfortable truth nobody wants to admit about the sector
This is Episode 004 of The Foundpreneur Podcast — where we cover the founders reshaping the Caribbean and its diaspora.
Follow Helen’s Daughters: Website — helensdaughters.org Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, X — @HelensDaughters
The Foundpreneur Podcast covers Caribbean founders, Caribbean entrepreneurship, and the builders reshaping the region and its diaspora. New episode every week.
Subscribe to The Foundpreneur Weekly newsletter — foundpreneur.co
Follow Foundpreneur — @foundpreneur on Instagram
