by Alyssa Spence
MIAMI – For Caribbean women entrepreneurs, the journey into industries like tech and finance often begins without guidance. In the past, the largest barrier was the lack of access to funding resources for their ventures. The eMerge Americas conference stands to break down that barrier by connecting the entrepreneur to funding sources.
Throughout the year to scout out potential entrepreneurs there is the eMerging Markets Road Show, with stops throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, including the Dominican Republic, eMerge is taking bold steps to meet the entrepreneurs where they are and introduce them to new opportunities.
Overcoming Barriers
At the center of the eMerge Americas movement, is Melissa Medina the co-founder, CEO, and president. Melissa is of Cuban descent and can speak to the barriers entrepreneurs face firsthand.
“We travel to different emerging markets, boots on the ground, to have a transfer of knowledge to understand the tech and entrepreneurial landscape and in each of these countries. And then we bring them together in Miami once a year at the global tech conference in person.”
Being a first-generation American, she openly discussed the importance of eMerge Americas’ mission, which champions the idea that entrepreneurship should transcend geographical and gender limitations.
“We have an initiative called the Empower Series that’s new around where we provide a platform for underrepresented founders to be able to pitch their ideas, connect with investors, and then fast track them into our accelerator program. So we do that for female founders, black founders, Hispanic founders, veteran founders. It’s a big part of our DNA.”
Underserved Communities
Initiatives like this are a turning point for underrepresented communities in tech. These groups might be overlooked in traditional investment structures. That’s why she is focused on ensuring the eMerge ecosystem goes beyond South Florida. She wants to connect with international talent.
Melissa stated, “Females from underrepresented regions might have a much deeper understanding of the challenges and or the opportunities, you know, in their country or where they’re from, that they could then kind of leverage that to build something and scale it globally as well.”
QuickCart
Monique Powell, the founder and CEO of QuickCart, a food delivery startup based in Jamaica. What began as a solution for unreliable food delivery in some Jamaican areas has grown into a national business. This business keeps growing. But Monique’s vision goes beyond that.
Monique came to the eMerge Americas conference to do more than just showcase QuickCart’s current operations. She went there to pursue the bigger mission of transforming QuickCart into a Caribbean fintech platform that allows money transfers between the U.S. and the Caribbean region. For many Caribbean families, sending money back home is essential, but current systems are costly or unreliable.
The conference, eMerge Americas, provides Monique with what every founder needs: the chance to be more visible to possible investors. This is how eMerge Americas facilitates global investor connections, which Melissa described as critical connections.
Bridging Access
The conference’s role in bridging access cannot be overstated. In spaces where women founders, especially from underserved regions, are often left out of funding conversations, eMerge creates an ecosystem where support is now “tangible.” It connects female-led businesses to venture capital, governmental support, and other founders on a similar journey.
As QuickCart looks to scale across the Caribbean and take a foothold in fintech, it reflects the kind of impact Medina dreamed of when building eMerge. It’s not just about finding the next unicorn company, it’s about creating to serve communities.
