Happy Holidays GGR Family!

Vannetta Seecharran has been influencing art and design in the jewellery field for nearly 20 years. Born in Guyana in 1969, the London-based jewellery teacher migrated at the age of 11 with her parents to New York City. She graduated in 1991 from the prestigious Parsons School of Art with a BA in Product Design, and in 1996 earned an MFA in Jewellery from State University of New York at New Paltz.   She later moved…

Guyanese-born legislator, Roxanne Jacqueline Persaud, was elected to the New York Senate on November 3, 2015 after defeating her two challengers in the elections for the 19thSenatorial District.  Back in November 2014, she became the  first female, first black, first Guyanese to hold the position of Assembly member for the 59th Assembly District in Brooklyn, New York . Persaud, 49, polled 6,980 votes, or 88 per cent of the votes cast, while Jeffrey Ferretti, the Republic Party challenger, received…

Guyanese-born Daphne Steele made headlines around the world when she became the UK’s first black hospital matron in 1964. For the time, Daphne’s achievement was nothing short of amazing. Former Deputy Director of Nursing at the Department of Health, Nola Ishmael, described Daphne as a ‘first’ who led with dignity and determination.“ She helped to shape aspirations for BME nurses across the profession who sought to follow in her footsteps.” Daphne was born in 1929…

With 19 Grade One passes and a Grade Two, Queen’s College student Elisa Hamilton, an aspiring doctor, is the country’s unofficial top performer at this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations. Speaking to Stabroek News from Texas, in the United States, an excited Hamilton, 16, related that she was over the moon when she received a text message from her mother telling her that she not only topped her school but achieved the highest…

Proud Guyanese-American and Brooklyn native,  Dawnn Lewis, best known for her strong and compassionate character Jaleesa Vinson in the hugely-popular 90s sitcom, A Different World, and for her current co-starring role in the HULU reboot of the Veronica Mars series has returned to Broadway as Zelma Bullock, Tina Turner’s mother in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. Dawnn grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Flatbush sections of Brooklyn and is excited about returning to Broadway, spending…

Owner and principal designer of Shasha Designs (shashadesigns.com), Keisha Edwards, says she has always had a designer’s mind. Born in Georgetown, Guyana, she recalls, as a child, sketching outfits and asking her mother, a seamstress, to bring her creations to life. In fact, coming from a line of seamstresses and tailors has given her an almost hereditary talent. She taught herself to sew, and the art of design, she says, came from God. “The seed…

WASHINGTON, DC June 10, 2018 (CMC)  — Guyanese American television host Joy-Ann Reid has been inducted into the into the “Wall of Fame” of the Washington-based Institute of Caribbean Studies (ICS)  Reid, is also a political analyst, journalist, and national correspondent for MSNBC. Reid was born in Brooklyn, New York to a father from the Democratic Republic of Congo and a Guyanese mother. She graduated from Harvard University in Massachusetts with a concentration in film…

She’s Mad Real: Popular Culture and West Indian Girls in Brooklyn In She’s Mad Real, Oneka LaBennett draws on over a decade of researching teenage West Indian girls in the Flatbush and Crown Heights sections of Brooklyn to argue that Black youth are in fact strategic consumers of popular culture and through this consumption they assert far more agency in defining race, ethnicity, and gender than academic and popular discourses tend to acknowledge. Importantly, LaBennett…

Linisa George is a creative outburst of energy. Born in Guyana, Linisa migrated with her family to Antigua, the island where she calls home, at the tender age of 4. She wrote in secret from the age of 6; her poems were her escape from a world that she didn’t think she fit into. It wasn’t until 2003 while living in Toronto where she discovered the writings of the amazing Maya Angelou, that she realised…

Stabroek News Former Prime News reporter Folio Emis Richards was yesterday admitted to the local bar after her petition was presented to Acting Chief Justice Ian Chang by former chancellor of the judiciary Keith Massiah SC. Richards, 28, is the youngest of five children born to Oscar and Violet Richards and she grew up in Sisters Village, West Bank Demerara. After graduating from the West Demerara Secondary School in 2002, Richards first worked temporarily as…

Flora Zeta Zhang Elizabeth Tian Ai Cheong-Leen was born in Hong Kong in 1959.  Her father Hilton Cheong-Leen was born in Georgetown, British Guyana but is of Chinese descent and her mother Pauline Chow is from Beijing. Flora graduated from The Royal Ballet in the UK and at the Paris Opera in France. She starred as the lead actress in movies such as: “Life After Life”, “Duel to the Death”, “Chasing Girl” and “Return of…

Martha nee Fung Kee Fung was one of the earliest female business owners in Guyana (1800s). She became a landed proprietor who owned many businesses including a rice mill. She bought two abandoned sugar estates Waller’s Delight and Ruimzight at Windsor Forest which she rented to tenants to plant rice. Martha Street in Windsor Forrest is named for her. Sarah Lam-a-Poo born in 1870, was the grandmother of Errol “Ping” Gillette, Guyana’s first Ombudsman after…

Future Olympian, Andrea Fosters, recently added another award to her outstanding resume when she was named “Woman of the Year” by the New Jersey Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women!  The middle distance runner is the first Guyanese student to receive this distinguished honor. This annual recognition is awarded during the month of February in honor of the 32nd anniversary of National Girls & Women in Sports Day; a national observance celebrating the extraordinary achievements of women and girls…

Born in Georgetown, Guyana and raised in California’s Silicon Valley, hairstylist Marcia Hamilton is known for her ability to mesh old school beauty with up to minute trends and techniques. She discovered her passion for art and style at an early age, but against her mother’s predictions, Marcia had ambitions of becoming an auto mechanic. After a series life changing events, destiny lead Marcia onto the inevitable path of her career in hair. She began…

Born on October 31, 1993 in Georgetown, Guyana, Letitia Michelle Wright is an UK-based actress, known for her roles in Glasgow Girls, My Brother the Devil and Urban Hymn. Migrating to London with her mother at the age of six, Letitia first fell in love with acting at her Finsbury Park primary school when she got the opportunity to play a young Rosa Parks onstage. “I felt so comfortable,” she recalls. “I even did the…