Dr. Marielle Barrow Maignan

Dr. Marielle Barrow Maignan is a cultural strategist, ecosystem architect, and curator, leading transformative initiatives that build enabling environments, data intelligence systems, and strategic funding landscapes as bedrock for creative industry development. She is the CEO of Caribbean InTransit, an arts education and ecosystem company and leads the Caribbean InTransit Consortium, a collective of more than ten companies across the Caribbean and Africa with reach across 23 Caribbean Countries. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Caribbean InTransit Arts Journal now in its eighth issue and co- founded Synapse.Zone, a creative tech web platform in collaboration with CaribeArt. Most recently, Dr. Barrow served as Curator and Coordinator for CARIFESTA X, Barbados (a 10 day festival) with a double portfolio responsible for Big Conversations and Symposia.

Anchored in ethnographic practice, with theoretical grounding, propelled by innovative design, Dr. Barrow Maignan’s work centers on ensuring that policy interventions, design and management of funding mechanisms, and data systems translate into effective, sustainable support for artists, creative entrepreneurs, and communities. Key roles include development and implementation of Accelerators and Grant Schemes for UNESCO, Cayman National Cultural Foundation and serving as the incepting Coordinator of the Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Fund (CIIF) at the Caribbean Development Bank, where she led programming for the Bank’s 19 Borrowing Member Countries. She transformed CIIF into a robust fund mechanism with multiple accelerators as pilots for university programs from Festival Tourism to IP, grant streams, and knowledge-products. Under her leadership, programme components included ecosystem mapping, data collection and analysis (Creative Industry Profiles for 10 Caribbean countries, IP Toolkits by sub-sector), enabling environment pillars ( supervised the structuring of a training program and manual for funding architecture for developmental financial institutions) institutional strengthening, stakeholder engagement, and leveraging additional financing.

Driven by a conviction that a vibrant arts sector requires more than individual creativity—that it needs robust systems, policies, financing mechanisms, and data-driven insight—Dr. Barrow Maignan’s leadership is focused on ensuring the cultural and creative industries are equipped with structural foundations to scale, sustain, and innovate. She is presently completing a book on the Caribbean Creative Industries, advancing a major publication under contract.