Happy New Year GGR Family!

When you think of a well rounded student, Ayisha Jackson comes to mind.  This weekend the senior at Brown University will be among the Class of 2018 and will graduate with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Materials Engineering.  Ayisha’s academic achievement is not the only impressive thing about this very bright young woman.  She has interned at NASA and Vanderbilt Institute for Nanoscale Science and Engineering, studied in Hong Kong,  traveled throughout the continent of Asia…

JEAN SMALL is a Guyanese Jamaican living in Jamaica since 1954. She graduated from the University of the West Indies in Foreign Languages,–French, Spanish and Latin and her profession all her life has been as an educator. She has worked in Guyana, Trinidad, Nigeria, Australia and here in Jamaica as a teacher of French at both Secondary and University levels. Her love since school days has been theatre and she now considers herself first an…

Deborah Nirmala Misir is a Guyanese/American attorney and founding partner of Lally & Misir, LLP. She is the daughter of New Amsterdam, Guyana-based attorney Jorawar Misir. A leading federal litigator and expert on administrative, constitutional and government regulatory law, she has over fifteen years of experience in both government and private practice, including briefing over seventy federal appeals cases up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court, and making seventeen federal appellate oral arguments. She…

Take some time to celebrate yourself today. Joel Osteen once said “When nobody else celebrates you, learn to celebrate yourself. When nobody else compliments you, then compliment yourself. It’s not up to other people to keep you encouraged. Encouragement should come from within.”

As a highly successful voters’ rights lawyer in the US, Marcia is able to help thousands of persons, particularly minorities, through her work and hopes to replicate her successes in Guyana. Now 46 years old, Marcia lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and two daughters. Though she has lived in America for more than three decades, Marcia said that she had never forgotten her roots. Promoting democratic rights in Guyana and beyond…Lawyer Marcia Johnson-Blanco…

On October 29th His Excellency President David Granger delivered the main address at the Ministry of Education’s 19th annual National Education Award ceremony at the National Cultural Centre. The Office of the Presidency honored several students who excelled in high school in 2015, and at the CAPE and CSEC examinations.  The majority of the top achievers were girls  representing public and private high schools throughout Guyana. Below President David Granger and officials from the Education Ministry poses for a…

Allison Butters-Grant  is the Chief Executive Officer of Global Seafood Distributors, an importing/exporting business that she jointly operates with her husband, Kerwin.  The daughter of successful seafood entrepreneurs she opened her own Seafood Market in Guyana specializing in wild caught seafood sourced from Guyana with the mantra “straight from the sea to your plate.” Her business distributes  seafood locally in Guyana and to the international markets, including the Caribbean and the US.  In 2015, Guyana Chronicle…

Guyanese born Rosalind Kilkenny McLymont is the  editor-in-chief of The Network Journal, a New  York-based business magazine for Black professionals and entrepreneurs and CEO of newly launched AfricaStrictlyBusiness.com. She is the author of the  award-winning non-fiction title, Africa: Strictly Business, The Steady March to  Prosperity (The Network Journal Communications Inc., 2009), and the groundbreaking novel–Middle Ground (Beckham, 2006). She is also a partner in McLymont, Kunda & Co., an international trade and  business development strategy…

With a yearning desire for success and the belief that anything is possible, 21 year old Rafieya’s ambitions include becoming a CPA ( Certified Public Accountant), owning and operating a Financial Business, winning Miss World, walking the Runways of Paris and Milan and to support a Non-Profit that focuses on children. With several titles to her name, she is no stranger to pageantry and describes herself as fearless, persistent and dedicated and practical. She is…

Lakshmee Singh is a well known talk show host and producer of the popular “Let’s Talk with Lakshmee” show.  The  multitalented TV personality is also a dancer, actress, community worker, choreographer and has been in the public eye since the age of five.  Lakshmee has performed for large audiences at prestigious venues such as Westbury Music Fair and The Continental Arena. She has taught and coached many groups of young girls for stage performances. Lakshmee’s first acting experience was…

Grace Nichols is a Guyanese poet.  She was born in Georgetown, Guyana in 1950, the fifth of seven children. She was raised in the village of Highdam and attended the school where her father worked as headmaster and her mother taught piano lessons. At age eight she moved with her family to Georgetown, and at age sixteen she left high school with the hope of becoming a teacher. Earning a degree in communications at the University…

Dr. Oneka LaBennett is Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University. She received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Harvard University in 2002, and her B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology from Wesleyan University in 1994. Born in Guyana and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Dr. LaBennett’s research and teaching interests include popular culture; race, gender and consumption; urban anthropology; transnationalism and diaspora; and Caribbean migration. Dr. LaBennett is the author of She’s Mad Real:…

 It was out of the need to connect with Guyanese who were interested in seeing films by Guyanese and Caribbean filmmakers that the Timehri Film Festival was born three years ago, according to Romola Lucas, one of its founders. And while the business community and the government And while the business community and the government have not fully bought in to the festival financially, Lucas is heartened by the response at the community level, in…

Bishops: My Turbulent Colonial Youth More books by Mona Williams:  Her list of books include: How we made a colour television show (1973); The turtle who longed to be a bird (1973); Christmas in Guyana (1974); The day I swam the river (1974); How the goat lost his voice (1974); Old Medicine (1974); The ant who refused titles (1975); Granny (1975); Father Martin Heale (1975); Old Bell (1975); When I went to the pictures (1975);…

First Day of School: Do You Want to Be My Friend?