More than 60 se­nior lead­ers from across the Caribbean di­as­po­ra and the Unit­ed States gath­ered last week­end for a closed-door pre­view of WHIS­TLE, a new lead­er­ship plat­form po­si­tion­ing it­self as a uni­fy­ing force for Caribbean in­flu­ence, eco­nom­ic pow­er and long-term lega­cy.

Sev­er­al par­tic­i­pants trav­elled specif­i­cal­ly for the event, re­flect­ing what or­gan­is­ers de­scribed as grow­ing ur­gency with­in a di­as­po­ra es­ti­mat­ed at more than 10 mil­lion peo­ple, gen­er­at­ing rough­ly US$170 bil­lion in an­nu­al eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

The ini­tia­tive is led by Trinida­di­an-born glob­al lead­ers Denise Williams and Stacey Luces, whose com­bined ex­pe­ri­ence spans multi­na­tion­al op­er­a­tions, pub­lic sys­tems, struc­tured fi­nance, mem­ber­ship or­gan­i­sa­tions and phil­an­thropy.

“For the first time, lead­ers across the di­as­po­ra showed up not just to con­nect, but to build with pur­pose. WHIS­TLE ex­ists be­cause we are done ris­ing alone,” said Luces, WHIS­TLE’s Chief Pur­pose Of­fi­cer.

Williams, the plat­form’s Chief Im­pact Of­fi­cer, said WHIS­TLE’s mem­ber­ship mod­el tar­gets lead­ers seek­ing align­ment be­tween in­flu­ence, wealth cre­ation and col­lec­tive im­pact.

“Our struc­ture en­ables lead­ers who are ready for a plat­form that aligns in­flu­ence, grows wealth and dri­ves col­lec­tive im­pact,” she said.

Among those at­tend­ing was Bruce Lai, Con­sul Gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go to Flori­da, who spoke to the com­plex­i­ty of the Caribbean di­as­po­ra and the trust re­quired to build mean­ing­ful sys­tems of col­lab­o­ra­tion. He said WHIS­TLE cre­ates space to strength­en con­nec­tions and sup­port the next gen­er­a­tion amid rapid glob­al change.

Keynote speak­er Kei­th Levy, the Ja­maican-born in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nance ex­ec­u­tive, stressed the role of trust in col­lec­tive ad­vance­ment.

“Cap­i­tal flies as fast as trust. We can­not build a fu­ture if we car­ry for­ward the mis­trust of the past,” Levy said, urg­ing Caribbean lead­ers, of­ten suc­cess­ful in­di­vid­u­al­ly, to move for­ward to­geth­er.

Williams and Luces al­so un­veiled WHIS­TLE’s lega­cy arms: We WHIS­TLE With Love, its phil­an­thropic ini­tia­tive; and WHIS­TLE Next Gen, fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing emerg­ing Caribbean-root­ed lead­ers.

The plat­form ac­ti­vat­ed im­me­di­ate sup­port for fam­i­lies in Ja­maica af­fect­ed by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, prompt­ing pri­vate con­tri­bu­tions from at­ten­dees.

Ear­ly sup­port came from strate­gic part­ners, in­clud­ing for­mer Ca­ble & Wire­less CEO John Reid, who pre­sent­ed a US$2,000 do­na­tion through his fam­i­ly char­i­ty, Bynx, to sup­port med­ical and com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives in Ja­maica.

At­ten­dees de­scribed the gath­er­ing as a rare mo­ment of uni­fied in­tent among Caribbean lead­ers. The pre­view marked the close of WHIS­TLE’s glob­al pre-launch phase, with full pro­gram­ming set to be­gin in Jan­u­ary 2026, in­clud­ing month­ly lead­er­ship coun­cils, quar­ter­ly in­vest­ment-fo­cused Cap­i­tal Ta­bles and cu­rat­ed trust-build­ing en­gage­ments.