About the Orbtronics Innovation Summit 2026

The Orbtronics Innovation Summit 2026 is a major Caribbean innovation event taking place on November 21–22, 2026 in Saint Lucia. Help build the Caribbean's Silicon Forest. Join the movement shaping the future of innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology in the Caribbean. The theme is “Frontiers of Innovation — Where the region's capital, talent and technology form a singularity for your success..” It welcomes sponsors, partners, investors, speakers, exhibitors, policymakers, corporations, innovation ecosystem partners, media partners, universities, government agencies, volunteers. More information coming soon.

Speakers

• Philip J. Pierre, Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia.
• Hon. John Paul Estephane, Minister in the Ministry of Tourism, Commerce, Investment, Creative Industries, Culture and Heritage, Saint Lucia.
• Adam Phillips, Former Managing Partner at Techstars, United States. Adam H Phillips is the Founder and Managing Partner of AthletesInnovate where he primarily invests in early-stage startups, and is always on the lookout to build and buy sports brands. Adam is also a Board Member for a veterans NP focused-on entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA), and an EIR with George Mason University's Costello School of Business.
• Anthony Abed, CEO @ SOVO | Investor, Caribbean. Anthony is a venture builder and systems thinker operating at the edge of fintech, web3, and emerging markets. As CEO of SOVO, he helps teams design scalable ventures that unlock access, ownership, and opportunity, from digital wallets to agentic infrastructure.
• Robin Chase, Co-Founder & Former CEO of Zipcar, valued at US$1.2B in 2011, United States. Robin Chase is one of the most influential figures in the collaborative economy. She is the co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the world's leading carsharing network, which she grew from a single car and a handful of members into a global service that reshaped how cities think about mobility. She later founded Buzzcar, a peer-to-peer carsharing service in France, and co-founded Veniam, a network company that moves terabytes of data between vehicles and the cloud.
• Kemal Brown, Founder & CEO, Digita Global Group Inc | Investor, Jamaica. Kemal Brown is the Founder, President & CEO of Digita Global Marketing Ltd, a Caribbean based, global impact focused media company and marketing agency. He is also Chairman of Digita Global Group Inc. He is a graduate of the University of the West Indies and presently sits on its Distinguished Volunteers Committee. He is a former Academic, having lectured at two Caribbean Universities. Mr. Brown has been privileged to be a Member of the Rotary Club of St. Andrew, is a Fellow of the Commonwealth 33Sixty Leadership Programme. He is a former Vice-Curator of the Global Shapers Kingston Hub.
• Owen Sakawa, Founder & CEO of Elloe AI | Forbes AI Council, Kenya. Owen Sakawa is the founder of Elloe AI. His work focuses on the part of AI governance that starts after launch: how teams monitor live systems, review higher-risk behavior, and build intervention paths when conditions change.
• Itbaan Nafi, Founder and Managing Partner of Breakthrough Ventures, United States. Itbaan Nafi is an entrepreneur passionate about human-centered design and national economic development. He designed his bachelor's degree at Stanford University, called Software, Policy, and Design Engineering, by combining human-computer interaction, design thinking, and political science, and served as a teaching assistant in the master's departments for Management Science & Engineering and Sustainability. Itbaan was selected as an inaugural Obama-Chesky Scholar where he created Design for Bangladesh, an entrepreneurship accelerator for students in his home village, which served as the inspiration for Breakthrough.
• Sara Torabi, Investment Operation Manager at Plug and Play Tech Center , United States. Sara Torabi is an investment and startup ecosystem professional with experience across venture capital, entrepreneurship, and global innovation. She has worked with founders, investors, corporate leaders, universities, and international delegations from around the world, giving her a broad perspective on how startups navigate different ecosystems, access opportunities, and build meaningful global networks.
• Sandra A. C. Glasgow, Managing Director, First Angels Caribbean | Investor, Jamaica. Mrs. Sandra A. C. Glasgow has a few passions — high among them: startups, scaleups, angel investing, business incubation and corporate governance. She is the Managing Director of her consulting company, BizTactics Limited, a Co-Founder of Jamaica's first Angel Investor Network, FirstAngels Caribbean, and a Co-Founder and Managing Director of RevUP Caribbean, a 5-month virtual business incubator which has supported a community of almost 200 innovative startups in the Region. In 2023, she was appointed Honorary Consul for the Republic of Suriname in Jamaica.
• Ian John, CEO of CyberEYE | Former Regional CEO of Massy Technologies, Trinidad & Tobago. Ian John is a technology futurist, digital transformation leader, and the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CyberEYE, a global cybersecurity solutions provider with a presence in the Americas, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. He is deeply committed to helping organizations strengthen cybersecurity resilience, safeguard critical digital assets, and navigate the growing risks of an increasingly connected world.
• Stephen Felix, CEO at Medial Health | Former Vice President at Goldman Sachs, Caribbean.
• Kyle Maloney, Director, F1RST Digital, Trinidad & Tobago. Kyle Maloney is a technology entrepreneur, digital marketer, and investor advancing technology and entrepreneurship across the Caribbean for over a decade. His work centres on helping people harness technology to create transformative impact and solve meaningful problems at scale. He Co-Founded FIRST Digital, a premier digital strategy firm serving top brands in finance, retail, and e-commerce, and Tech Beach Retreat (TBR), a platform that became the Caribbean's leading tech ecosystem, connecting global innovators and industry leaders. TBR partnered with the likes of Google, AWS, and Microsoft, earning coverage in Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, and The Huffington Post.
• Tesla La Touche, Founder & CEO, Zymonetics, Canada. Tesla is a healthcare executive, strategist, and entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience leading transformation across health innovation, market access, and stakeholder engagement in North America, Europe, and Asia. She is the Founder and CEO of Zymonetics, a next-generation health company redefining care beyond pills and surgery through AI-driven diagnostics, regenerative therapies, and personalized, integrative medicine.
• Johanan Dujon, Founder & CEO, Algas, Saint Lucia. Johanan Dujon is a Saint Lucian entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Algas, a company transforming Sargassum seaweed into sustainable fertilizers for regional and international markets. Since 2014, Algas has processed more than one million pounds of Sargassum seaweed.
• Zwede Hewitt, Head of Partnerships, Impakt AI, Trinidad & Tobago. Zwede Hewitt was the 1st Caribbean-based tech founder to raise Silicon Valley VC capital backed by Plug and Play Tech Center. He is a former National 400m champion for Trinidad and Tobago, a 2008 Olympian and a 2014 Commonwealth Games medalist.
• Garvin Casimir, Software Engineer, Cloud & Distributed Systems at Tesla, United States.
• Janieve Lamar, AI Delivery Consultant at IBM, Caribbean.
• Damian McIntyre, Founder of McIntyre Consulting Services, Saint Lucia. Damian McIntyre is the Founder and Principal Consultant of McIntyre Consulting Services Ltd. (MCS), a Caribbean firm that connects global development initiatives with the realities of the region's private sector. A St. Lucian-Canadian professional, he holds a Master's in Management Innovations and Entrepreneurship and has built his career developing the data, strategy, and capacity that Caribbean innovation ecosystems need to grow.
• N'Nhyn Fernander, Founder and CEO of Prospuh, Bahamas.
• Savita Mace, General Manager, CIPS Caribbean, Caribbean. Savita Mace MSc, FCIPS is the General Manager for CIPS Caribbean. She is a former Chief Procurement Officer with over 25 years of global procurement and supply chain leadership experience, gained across blue-chip organisations including AstraZeneca, Roche, Sony, and the NHS.
• Dareem Jeffrey, Founder & CEO, EcoWash Global, Trinidad & Tobago. Dareem Jeffrey is from the rural village of Moruga in deep south Trinidad. At just 24, after losing everything to unemployment due to COVID-19, he launched what would become his signature venture, and today, at 30, he leads a business with global reach.
• Sanovnik Destang, Executive Director, Bay Gardens Resorts, Saint Lucia. Sanovnik Destang is the Executive Director and a shareholder of Bay Gardens Resorts, a locally owned hotel group in Saint Lucia operating 233 rooms, seven conference spaces, and five restaurants. He is both a Chartered Accountant (CA) and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and began his professional career at KPMG in Toronto, where he spent four years before returning home in 2008 to help lead the family-owned business.
• Imran Sargusingh, Vice President of Engineering for Microsoft Azure, Saint Lucia. Imran Sargusingh is Vice President of Engineering for Microsoft Azure, where he leads engineering strategy and execution across foundational cloud services, engineering systems, service change management, and regulatory readiness. Since joining Microsoft as a software engineer in 2000, he has held leadership roles across the .NET Framework, Visual Studio, OneDrive, Skype, Windows, Microsoft Edge, and Azure. Originally from St. Lucia, Imran brings more than two decades of experience building global-scale platforms and leading teams through complex technology transformations.
• Ana-Kaye V. Green Marshall, MBA, Group Chief Treasury Officer, PROVEN Group Ltd, Jamaica. Ana-Kaye Green Marshall is a Caribbean corporate finance and treasury executive with more than 15 years of experience helping institutions mobilise capital, manage liquidity, and turn ambitious growth strategies into financeable plans. Her work sits at the intersection of capital strategy, banking, investments, and enterprise growth, giving her a practical view of how founders and businesses can fund innovation without limiting themselves to a simple choice between straight equity and traditional debt.
• Javed Samuel, Cryptography Services Practice Head at NCC Group, Saint Lucia. Javed Samuel is a cybersecurity leader and has worked in the field for over two decades. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies to startups in the US and Caribbean and government and regional organizations. He is currently the Global Lead for NCC Group Cryptography Services.
• Dr. Camir Ricketts, Bioinformatics Scientist in AI at NVIDIA, Jamaica. Dr. Camir Ricketts is a computational biologist from Montego Bay, Jamaica, who earned his PhD in Computational Biology and Medicine from Weill Cornell Medicine, with a focus on cancer genomics. He is currently a Bioinformatics Scientist in Artificial Intelligence at NVIDIA, where his work has spanned the company's genomics and life sciences efforts, including NVIDIA Parabricks and BioNeMo. His work focuses on developing AI models for genomics and healthcare applications.
• Javier Galloway, Founder, Nuwaay, St. Kitts and Nevis. Javier Galloway is a pioneering Caribbean technology entrepreneur and the first resident of St. Kitts and Nevis to secure venture capital funding and successfully sell a company. A Sheffield Hallam University graduate and alumnus of the Draper University (Silicon Valley, USA) and Exchange at Department (Leeds, UK) accelerator programs, he built Nuwaay from scratch and is now leveraging his expertise to help develop the Caribbean venture capital and yachting industries.
• Tamaisha Eytle, Director, FutureBARBADOS, Barbados. For over a decade, Tamaisha Eytle has been a catalyst for development across the Caribbean, Canada, and India. A true Caribbean citizen — born in Guyana, raised in Jamaica, and now living in Barbados with her husband, tiny human, and dog — she brings a bold, purpose-driven energy to everything she does.
• Gemmia Jn Pierre, General Manager, CariGenetics Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia. Gemmia Jn Pierre is a biomedical scientist and General Manager of CariGenetics Saint Lucia, working at the intersection of genomics, research, and healthcare innovation. Her work focuses on advancing genomic medicine across the Caribbean, particularly its role in improving the prevention, early detection, and personalized management of non-communicable diseases.
• Aazah Daniel, Biomedical Scientist | Public Health & Genetics Research, Saint Lucia. Aazah Daniel is a biomedical science professional with experience in public health planning, health systems development, genetics research, and community health initiatives in Saint Lucia. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Science from North Carolina Wesleyan University and has contributed to national health initiatives through his work with the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs, including Universal Health Coverage planning, digital health development, workforce planning, and initiatives aimed at improving access to quality healthcare services.
• Starlina Roserie, Head of Operations and Corporate Banking, The Bank of Nevis Limited, St. Kitts and Nevis. Starlina S. Roserie is a senior banking executive with a track record of driving business growth, building high-value client relationships and leading strategic transformation. She currently serves as Chief Corporate Banking & Digital Payments Officer (Head of St. Kitts) at The Bank of Nevis Limited, providing strategic leadership across corporate banking and digital payments.
• Nicholas Farah, Chief Operating Officer, Term Finance, Caribbean. Nicholas Farah is the Chief Operating Officer and a founding employee of Term Finance, where he has helped build and scale the business from the ground up into a multi-market financial services company operating across the Caribbean.
• Melissa Howell, General Partner, Anansi Ventures, Barbados. Melissa Howell is a systems strategist of Bajan & Guyanese-ascent, and the co-founder and General Partner of Anansi Ventures, an investment and advisory platform building trade and capital corridors that connect Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Her Caribbean investment focus is embedded finance that sits inside workforce, creative-sector, social-impact, and food-system ventures, and how diaspora capital can reach Caribbean founders through trusted, structured channels. Over 25 years, including as founder of Social Impact Design Studios, she has supported 400+ institutions and enterprises in 40+ countries, from market-entry strategy for African diaspora-led brands to an $85M+ portfolio of workforce, education, and philanthropic programmes across Africa and the United States.
• Natasha Edwin-Walcott, Coordinator, MSME Development, Caribbean Development Bank, Caribbean. Natasha Edwin-Walcott is Coordinator, Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (MSME) Development at the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), where she provides strategic leadership for initiatives that strengthen enterprise development and competitiveness, including women economic empowerment and creative industries development. Through her work, she helps shape programmes and partnerships that expand market opportunities, strengthen entrepreneurship ecosystems, and enhance the capacity of Caribbean businesses to scale.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Orbtronics Innovation Summit 2026?

The Orbtronics Innovation Summit 2026 is a major Caribbean innovation event focused on entrepreneurship and technology, positioned as a step toward building the Caribbean's Silicon Forest.

When is the Orbtronics Innovation Summit 2026?

The summit takes place on November 21–22, 2026.

Where is the Orbtronics Innovation Summit 2026 held?

The summit is held in Saint Lucia, in the Caribbean.

Who should attend or get involved in the summit?

The summit welcomes sponsors, partners, investors, speakers, exhibitors, policymakers, corporations, innovation ecosystem partners, media partners, universities, government agencies, and volunteers.

How can I buy tickets for the Orbtronics Innovation Summit 2026?

Tickets are available on the official Luma event page linked from the landing page. Early-bird and full-rate options cover the Summit, gala, and VIP Silicon Forest Circle experiences.

What is the CDB|PROPEL Innovation Summit Fellowship 2026?

The Caribbean Development Bank, through its PROPEL programme, is sponsoring 10 entrepreneurs to participate in the Orbtronics Innovation Summit on November 21–22, 2026 at Royalton Saint Lucia. The fellowship includes round-trip airfare and three nights of accommodation for selected regional entrepreneurs, a startup exhibition booth, and a chance to pitch to world-class investors from Techstars, Plug and Play, and Anasi Ventures. Five places are for startups from Saint Lucia and five are for startups from other eligible CDB Borrowing Member Countries. Innovative startups may apply at the idea stage, while building a first prototype, or once the business is already growing. Applications close on October 30, 2026.

Who is speaking at the Orbtronics Innovation Summit 2026?

Confirmed speakers include Philip J. Pierre, Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, Hon. John Paul Estephane, Robin Chase, co-founder of Zipcar, Kemal Brown of Digita Global Group, Adam Phillips, Anthony Abed of SOVO, Sanovnik Destang of Bay Gardens Resorts, Javier Galloway of Nuwaay, Imran Sargusingh of Microsoft Azure, Camir Ricketts of NVIDIA, Javed Samuel of NCC Group, Tamaisha Eytle of FutureBARBADOS, Gemmia Jn Pierre of CariGenetics Saint Lucia, Starlina Roserie of The Bank of Nevis, Natasha Edwin-Walcott of the Caribbean Development Bank, and more. The full lineup is announced on a rolling basis.