by Mell P
For someone whose professional life began in investment banking, a career in museums might seem like an unlikely destination. But for the leader of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the path makes more sense when viewed through the themes that have followed him throughout his life: learning, community and the power of culture to bring people together.
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Born in St. Vincent and brought to New York as a baby, he has spent most of his life in Brooklyn. His connection to St. Vincent, however, has remained an important part of his identity, particularly in the way he thinks about community, culture and the responsibility to pass history from one generation to the next.
His childhood in New York included summers returning to St. Vincent, although those visits became less frequent as he entered high school and eventually college and began pursuing professional opportunities.
“I was born there, but I came up to New York when I was a baby,” he explained. “I came to New York when I was about one year old.”
His upbringing was therefore primarily American, but his Vincentian heritage remained a thread connecting him to a broader Caribbean identity. That connection would eventually intersect with his professional work in unexpected ways.
A career built around learning
Before arriving at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, he spent approximately seven years in investment banking, including positions at JPMorgan and Nomura Securities.
But even before entering finance, he had begun exploring the relationship between art and community.
While in college, he founded an arts organization called FOKUS, which used art as a means of creating community connections and bringing people together. That early experience would prove significant years later, even though his immediate professional trajectory took him into finance.
Investment banking offered a different kind of education. He describes the field as an environment where learning happens quickly, decisions have to be made rapidly and every moment matters. The experience sharpened his operational skills, but it did not diminish his longstanding interest in learning and education.
That interest was rooted even deeper in his childhood. He remembers using the Caribbean “red primer” books as a child, educational materials his parents incorporated into his upbringing even though they were not part of the American school system.
“Learning has always been a continued common thread,” he said. Eventually, that thread pulled him away from finance and toward education.
After returning to New York, he became involved with INROADS, an organization that helps young people gain access to internships and professional opportunities. He restarted an alumni association for the organization and became increasingly connected to people working in education.
A relationship with a board member of a charter school opened the door to another career transition. He ultimately became a co-leader of a middle school, a position he held for roughly six and a half years. The move represented more than a change in employment. It brought him closer to the work of developing young people and creating environments in which they could learn and grow.
Finding his way back to the museum
The Brooklyn Children’s Museum was not entirely unfamiliar territory.
As a child growing up in Brooklyn, he had visited the museum himself. Like many children, however, he eventually “aged out” of the experience. That changed in 2016.
A friend returned to the museum as a teaching artist and spent approximately 12 weeks working with its teen program on art and activism through collage. He began coming back to the museum regularly, eventually participating in additional programming and mentorship work with young people.
Still, he did not initially see the museum as a potential workplace.
“Museum spaces were not necessarily my common circles,” he recalled. “Most of this world that I’m in now was new and foreign to me.”
Then, in 2018, someone on the museum’s board called him with an opportunity: the museum was searching for a chief operating officer. He applied that night because the position drew on skills he had developed as a school leader, particularly operations and organizational management, while giving him an opportunity to return to a community-centered institution he had known since childhood.
He joined the Brooklyn Children’s Museum in 2019 as Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President.
In 2023, after the museum’s president announced her departure, he was asked whether he would be interested in stepping into the role. He pursued the opportunity and ultimately became president.
Looking back, he sees a consistent thread running through the seemingly disparate chapters of his career.
“Learning and community are related,” he said. “Education plays a role because we’re in the formal education space. But I would really put education under the umbrella of just a love of learning in general.”
Making space for Caribbean culture
That philosophy also informs the museum’s approach to Caribbean culture. Each year, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum hosts a Caribbean Festival on the first Saturday in August. The event introduces children and families to the diversity of Caribbean culture through art workshops, food-making, dance, performances, storytelling and other activities. But the museum’s Caribbean presence extends beyond one annual festival.
The institution works with Caribbean organizations and provides space for community events. Organizations connected to the West Indian American Day Carnival Association have used the museum for events leading up to the Labor Day celebration, while Sesame Flyers has also held celebrations there.
The museum also incorporates Caribbean culture into its permanent and ongoing programming. Its International Travel Agency exhibit includes Caribbean flags, carnival costumes, video footage of the West Indian Day Parade and a steel pan, giving children a tangible introduction to the region’s cultures.
The goal, he said, is not simply to create a single annual moment of recognition, but to make Caribbean culture part of a larger conversation about culture and community.
The museum has also explored programming connected to Caribbean Heritage Month in June, while August remains a particularly significant period for its Caribbean programming.
A Vincentian connection that crosses generations
As St. Vincent and the Grenadines approaches another Independence Day on October 27, his connection to the island takes on another dimension.
He sees the country as being in a period of change, particularly following a change in national leadership, and said he is interested in seeing what the coming months and years bring.
But for him, Independence is also an opportunity to reflect on the history that preceded it.
He points to the Garifuna people and the history of St. Vincent as examples of the island’s rich cultural legacy and its longstanding tradition of community.
Being Vincentian in the diaspora, he said, creates an immediate sense of connection when he encounters others from the island.
“There’s this automatic sense of connection,” he said. “What are you up to? What am I up to? I just want to know about it so we can support.”
That network, he believes, creates opportunities for collaboration that can stretch across borders.
His vision for the Caribbean extends beyond the areas that most often dominate public attention.
Sports and entertainment are important, he acknowledged, but he sees enormous potential in the arts, culture and technology as well.
For him, the central question is how to ensure that younger generations remain connected to the history and culture that came before them.
Keeping culture alive
Preserving culture, he argues, cannot simply mean looking backward.
It requires finding ways for children and young people to see themselves in that culture—and to find it relevant to their own lives.
“The reality of any culture, any history, it is younger people who have an opportunity to keep it going,” he said. “Without engaging them in ways that are relatable and palpable, we run the risk of losing key aspects of our heritage and our history.”
That philosophy is particularly fitting for someone whose career has taken him from finance to schools to one of Brooklyn’s most prominent cultural institutions for children.
The common denominator has never really been the industry.
It has been learning.
And whether he is thinking about a child discovering art at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, a student finding a pathway into a career, or a young Vincentian growing up in the diaspora, he returns to the same question: How do we give the next generation enough connection to the past to understand where they come from—and enough opportunity to create what comes next?
As St. Vincent and the Grenadines prepares to celebrate another Independence Day, that question carries particular resonance.
For him, celebrating independence means remembering the struggle and history that made it possible, while also looking forward.
It means preserving the heritage of the island while allowing its children to create histories of their own.
And it means recognizing that culture survives not simply because it is remembered, but because each generation chooses to carry it forward.
