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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.