Being born and raised in Curaçao taught me that it is not enough to be strong, resilient, and passionate. To truly foster change, you must also know how to use the power of your voice.

I’m currently the Executive Director of Palman Group, a Venture Capital firm based in Curaçao. I spend my days working with small and medium sized companies to incubate their ideas and accelerate their work.

Before this, I used to be a United Nations Youth Representative of the Kingdom of The Netherlands, the first person of Caribbean descent to ever be elected to hold this position.

I’ve worked with and for young people throughout my entire career. Very soon after being nationally elected to the Youth Parliament of Curaçao back in 2018, I realized that, as a young person, you can speak up, you can get democratically elected, and you can protest, but at the end of the day, if the older generation doesn’t want to listen to young people then you truly cannot do much about it.

Ever since that realization, I’ver made it my mission to break every glass ceiling that I can. Now, almost a decade later, after spending years being the youngest in lots of rooms, I’m more proud than ever. Not only because I have indeed broken lots of glass ceilings, but because I’ve used my place at the table to open doors and provide opportunities to other young people, who I hope will dedicate their careers to doing the same.