Marcia Brandon

Dr. Marcia Brandon is GEN's Global Advisor for the Caribbean.

She is an entrepreneurship development expert who has pioneered and championed the growth and development of the non-traditional sector of youth entrepreneurship development in the Caribbean, with the intersectionality of young women entrepreneurs. She is responsible for creating and developing over 20 business start-up programmes for young and matured under-served males and females wanting to start businesses in Barbados and the Caribbean. Since 2011 she has been the founder/managing director of the award-winning Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Livelihoods (CoESL). COESL is the host official of SKN GEW.

Dr. Brandon specializes in establishing entrepreneurship development organizations and their supporting programmes, including effectively lending capital to young and matured under-served and growth-oriented businesses. Her expertise lies in designing and implementing innovative business programs for entrepreneurs and organizations which support entrepreneurs. She is a lean start-up and design sprint facilitator, project manager and monitoring and evaluation specialist. She works with international donor organizations to design, monitor and evaluate entrepreneurship, people development, business mentoring, education, NGO and other similar projects/programmes. She has worked with Caribbean countries/organizations and individuals in Europe, Africa, Asia and Central America to establish entrepreneurship programmes and/or similar entities.

She served as the Executive Director of the Barbados Youth Business Trust for 15 years, and build it into a visible, sustainable entity before leaving its helm in 2012. Many of the programmes she created and developed over the years have been replicated throughout the region, within the Youth Business International network and elsewhere. Using knowledge transfer and learning techniques she has helped 8 regional youth business trusts to start-up and implement the best practice programmes she has developed at BYBT. For the 12 years she has been the Regional Coordinator, helping countries in the region to establish youth entrepreneurship organizations, or similar organizations. She has been a judge for TIC Americas Business Plan Competition and a Business Labs trainer for Young Americas Business Trust (YABT); a consultant for Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), USAID, CARICOM and UNDP. She has written numerous manuals, handbooks and “how-to” operational guides as well as articles on the topic of entrepreneurship, NGO challenges and business mentoring. She is an ecosystem builder, a business mentor and coach, a connector and an international speaker.