Marsha Massiah – Festival Director, Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival

Marsha’s love affair with stories began as she clung to the hemline of her grandmother’s skirt, the eager, young, wide-eyed receiving vessel for generations of her families’ stories. Unbeknownst to her family and herself, her purpose as a repository for Caribbean anthologies was being fashioned. Much later in adulthood and after two decades in education and event management as a hobby, Marsha migrated her passions to its happy place: the intersection of Caribbean stories, culture and history.

The BCLF was born out of her fiery devotion to her heritage and the need to promote the islands to which she is eternally indebted. Yearly, she mirrors Explainer’s Lorraine and leaves NY and her career as an instructional designer in healthcare behind. She dons wings and flies south to play ah Mas in the Greatest Festival on Earth – although she despises drinking rum. She is a proud honors graduate of the University of the West Indies, lists a 3-day stint in a roti shop among her wealth of work experience, and is obsessed with proving that one can indeed, with exercise, outwork a steady diet of cake and pone.

Mahmood Patel – Agriculturist, Hotelier, Filmmaker

Patel is a Barbadian entrepreneur and cultural advocate who owns Coco Hill Forest, a 66-acre regenerative agroforestry and agrotourism project in St. Joseph, and Ocean Spray Apartments in Christ Church. Focused on crops like coconuts, cocoa, and ginger, his work champions sustainability, climate resilience, and soil regeneration—using coconut cultivation as an eco-conscious alternative to sugar cane monoculture. From 2002 to 2011, he also led The Film Group, a collective that advanced Caribbean cinema through the Bridgetown Film Festival and regional collaborations. As both a hotelier and environmentalist, Patel continues to integrate tourism and agriculture to promote food security and sustainable development in Barbados.

Asha Lovelace – Filmmaker and Festival Director Caribbean Film Festival and Africa Film TT

Asha is a Trinidadian filmmaker known for her debut short George and the Bicycle Pump and her award-winning feature Joebell and America. In addition to her film production work, she writes screenplays, including adaptations of classic Caribbean literature. She is the founder and festival director of Africa Film Trinidad and Tobago (AFTT) and serves as Regional Secretary for the Caribbean Diaspora at the Federation of Pan African Filmmakers (FEPACI), fostering connections between Caribbean and African filmmakers. A dedicated educator, Asha has lectured in Film Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI) and founded the Young Cinema Society (YCS), introducing primary school students to global cinema. She holds a B.A. in Communications and Cinema Studies from Rutgers University, a specialization in Directing from EICTV in Cuba, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Cultural Studies at UWI.