Our Founder
Board Members
MANDISA NICHOLAS
Mandisa Nicholas has spent over a decade building connections, managing projects, and delivering impactful results across various industries. Her background in digital marketing, stakeholder engagement, and project coordination positions her to excel as Ecosystem Coordinator at Caribbean InTransit.
Mandisa’s experience includes creating strategies that bring people together, from artists to entrepreneurs, and helping them work toward common goals. She has a proven ability to design and manage outreach initiatives, foster cross-sector collaborations, and develop systems that drive meaningful, long-term growth.
With a passion for social development through the arts, Mandisa thrives on finding creative ways to connect communities. Her work reflects a deep commitment to building networks that amplify Caribbean cultural expressions and support innovation, research, and entrepreneurship. She is dedicated to creating opportunities that inspire change and help others make an impact.
BRETT PYPER
Brett Pyper is a South African arts, culture and heritage practitioner with over thirty years’ experience advancing and studying the country’s cultural-democratic transition. He grew up between Johannesburg and Pretoria/Tshwane, where his background as a classical musician informed his efforts to open up programming at the former performing arts councils as a young arts organiser. In the early 1990s, he arranged the first post-exile performances in Tshwane by returning jazz icons as well as showcasing the work of an emerging generation of musicians.
He also worked with singer-songwriters, choirs, Afrikaans counter-cultural artists and colleagues in related performance disciplines including dance and theatre. Based on this work, as a Fulbright scholar, he earned Master’s degrees from Emory University in Atlanta (in Interdisciplinary Studies) and New York University, where he earned his PhD on contemporary jazz culture in South Africa in 2014. He has taught arts, culture and heritage policy and management as well as ethnomusicology and popular music studies at Wits and Rhodes Universities. From 2008 to 2013 he was CEO of the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (KKNK), a major festival of art, popular and vernacular culture. He recently completed an 8-year term as Head of the Wits School of Arts, where he pursues ongoing research alongside his leadership responsibilities and supervises postgraduate work in music, theatre, dance, heritage and cultural policy.
He regularly serves as a mentor for The Festival Academy, having co-hosted Atelier Johannesburg in 2018 – the first on the African continent. As a researcher, he is the principal investigator for the Arts Research Africa project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which advances artistic research across all disciplines housed in the Wits School of Arts, prioritizing decolonial perspectives from the global South.
He is the research cluster leader of the National Institute for the Humanities & Social Science’s South African BRICS Think Tank on Arts, Culture & Heritage And/As Knowledge Production, and co-directs the Re-centring AfroAsia project
MELISSA JIMENEZ
Melissa Jimenez is a distinguished arts administrator and creative consultant from Trinidad and Tobago. MusicTT), a state-owned agency under the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Melissa’s academic journey includes a Master’s degree in Arts, Media, and Entertainment Management from Columbia College Chicago, achieved through a Fulbright scholarship. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Musical Arts from the University of the West Indies and has pursued various certifications in event management, music (specializing in steelpan), project planning, budgeting, scheduling, and personal branding.
Beyond her professional endeavors, Melissa is passionate about community service. She has contributed to several non-governmental organizations, including serving as the Marketing Manager for Kids in Need of Direction (KIND) and as the Director of Partner Relations with the Volunteer Center of Trinidad and Tobago (VCTT).
Throughout her career, Melissa has been dedicated to advancing the arts and culture sector in Trinidad and Tobago, leveraging her extensive experience and education to foster growth and international recognition for the nation’s creative industries.
SAFIYA HOYTE
Safiya Hoyte is a 24-year-old Trinidadian Artist who primarily depicts works of art through a variety of mediums -acrylic, clay, and digital design. Her artwork revolves around her life experiences and her viewpoints on society and its proponents.
Hoyte studied at Bishop Anstey High School, P.O.S from 2011 – 2018 where she pursued art and humanity studies up to the sixth form level. Hoyte obtained her BSc in Psychology from the University of the West Indies, Mona with Second Class Honors (2023). Art has always been a fundamental part of her life as she was introduced to the subject at a young age through her father and first mentor, Fitzroy Hoyte.
Hoyte has been apprenticing under skilled local ceramicist Bunty O’Connor for the past 3 years assisting with the construction of intricate murals and an assortment of other clay-based works at Ajoupa Pottery.
Ajoupa Pottery. Hoyte sees art as a platform, which can be manipulated to connect, communicate and initiate change amongst individuals on a psychological level. "Art is essentially the link between myself and society; it allows me to physically manifest my thoughts in a contradictory and purposefully thought-provoking manner.”
Other Team Members
