Bridges, Not Brain Drain: A Diaspora Call to Action

Note from the President

June is Caribbean American Heritage Month in the United States, observed officially since 2006. For an association whose membership lives, by necessity, both inside and outside the region, this month is a useful prompt to think about the network we are part of and not just the territory we sit on.

Aisha Mohan has written this month's feature as a call to action. The case is one we have made before, that the diaspora is the most under-utilized resource for Caribbean AI development. The newness is in the specificity. Aisha names the programmes, the partnerships, and the next twelve months of work we have signed up for. Read it, and then, if you are a member of CAIRA living outside the region, take the action that fits your situation.

Two short items. First, the Atlantic hurricane season started on June 1. If you have not done the preparation Dr. Charles wrote about in April, do it this week. Second, our first regional AI Summit will be held in Bridgetown on October 9 and 10. Early registration is now open. We expect over a thousand attendees. The schedule will be published in July.

Adrian Dunkley Founder and President, Caribbean AI Association

---

Feature

Bridges, Not Brain Drain: A Diaspora Call to Action

By Aisha Mohan

A short story to start. In April, I was in Brooklyn for a community meeting with the Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce. There were sixty people in the room. Forty four of them worked in technology in some capacity. Of those, eleven worked at one of the major AI laboratories, the cloud providers, or large AI native startups. They were software engineers, researchers, product managers, designers, and one woman in policy who knew more about US AI legislation than most people in Washington. They were Trinidadian, Jamaican, Bajan, Vincentian, Guyanese, Dominican, Haitian, Cuban, and Saint Lucian. They were all, to a person, doing important work for organizations that are not based in the Caribbean.

I asked the room a question. How many of you have, in the past year, contributed any time, any expertise, any introductions, any code, or any money to an AI effort in the Caribbean. Three hands went up. Two of them had given to a school technology fund. One had reviewed a friend's pitch deck.

I asked a second question. How many of you would, if asked clearly and offered a path that respected your time and your career, give back to the region in a way that was practically useful. Every hand in the room went up.

This is the situation as I see it. The Caribbean diaspora in AI is large, talented, and willing. The structures to mobilize that diaspora are weak. The result is a continuous transfer of technical capacity out of our region, with nothing coming back at a comparable scale. CAIRA exists, in part, to close that gap. This piece is a description of how we propose to do it in the next twelve months, and what we are asking each of you to do.

The diagnosis.

Why does Caribbean diaspora capacity not flow back in the way that, say, Indian or Israeli or Irish diaspora capacity does. There are several reasons, and the honest naming of them is the start of the answer.

The first reason is fragmentation. Our diaspora is large but distributed across many destination countries and many origin countries. The Indian diaspora in technology, while internally diverse, has a sufficient density in particular US metros and in particular companies to organize itself. Caribbean technologists are spread across New York, Miami, Toronto, London, Washington, Boston, and a dozen smaller hubs, and they are returning, in their imagination, to twelve different countries with twelve different governments and twelve different economic situations. There is no single channel.

The second reason is the absence of trusted recipient organizations. A Trinidadian engineer in San Francisco who wants to give time, money, or influence back to the region runs into a familiar problem. Which organization. Run by whom. With what track record. With what accountability. The technology sector in our region has not, until recently, had a body that an outsider could trust as the default point of contact. The same problem exists in academia, in arts, and in public service.

The third reason is the design of the ask. Most diaspora outreach from the region has historically asked for money. Money is rarely the binding constraint. Capacity is. The diaspora technologist who has fifteen hours a quarter to give, and who would prefer to give time and expertise, has historically not been offered a way to do that.

The fourth reason is friction. Working with an institution in the region, from outside, has been administratively painful. Visas, banking, contracts, time zones, communication norms, and the sheer slowness of correspondence have all conspired to make participation feel harder than it should be.

The plan.

CAIRA will not solve all of these problems in 2025. We will solve three of them, in a way that the others can build on.

First, we are launching a Diaspora Working Group, with chapters in New York, Miami, Toronto, London, and Washington. The Working Group is open to any CAIRA member in those metros and is being organized by the local co-chairs whose names are at the foot of this piece. Each chapter will hold one in-person event per quarter, and one virtual event per month. The point of the Working Group is not to talk about the Caribbean. It is to coordinate work for the Caribbean. Show up with a skill, leave with a project.

Second, we are launching what we are calling the CAIRA Fellows programme. The Fellows programme matches a diaspora technologist with a Caribbean institution that has named a specific, scoped piece of work. The institution might be a Ministry of Education that needs help drafting an AI in schools policy. It might be a hospital that needs help designing a clinical AI evaluation framework. It might be a small business association that needs help running a training programme. The Fellow commits to twenty hours over three months. The institution commits to managing the engagement properly, giving credit publicly, and reporting on outcomes. The first cohort of Fellows starts in September. Twenty matches in the first cohort. One hundred by the end of 2026 if the model holds.

Third, we are launching a Returners programme, for diaspora technologists considering a partial or full return to the region. This is not a recruitment programme in the conventional sense. It is, more honestly, a navigation programme. If you are considering moving back, even part-time, the questions you face are practical and concrete. Where will I live. What is the school situation for my children. What will my equivalent role pay in Bridgetown or Port of Spain or Kingston. What is the tax situation. What is the work culture. What is the realistic professional ceiling. The Returners programme pairs you with a peer who has already made the move, and with a CAIRA member in the country you are considering, so you can ask those questions of a person who has actually had to answer them. We have run an informal version of this for six months. The structured programme launches in July.

What we are asking, by audience.

If you are a diaspora technologist reading this in New York, Miami, Toronto, London, or Washington. Join the Working Group in your city. The first meetings are listed at caribbeanaiassociation.com/diaspora. Show up. Give what you have. Take what fits.

If you are a senior diaspora professional at one of the major AI laboratories, the major cloud providers, or a large AI native startup. We need a small number of you to act as institutional anchors. The relationship between CAIRA and your employer, where appropriate, is a relationship that begins with one person. If you are that person, write to diaspora@caribbeanaiassociation.com. Three of the most consequential partnerships our region has secured in the past year began with a single Caribbean engineer in California raising her hand internally.

If you are a Caribbean founder or executive at a diaspora-led startup. We will be running a Diaspora Founder track at the October Summit in Bridgetown. The track exists because we want a structured, on-the-record conversation about how diaspora founders engage with the region as a market, as a talent pool, and as a community. If you are building, come and tell us how.

If you are a younger diaspora professional, early in your career. The most valuable thing you can offer right now is your time and your willingness to learn alongside Caribbean peers. Our Open Source Working Group is building infrastructure that any contributor with three free evenings a month can meaningfully advance. The barrier to entry is low. The barrier to staying is good work. Sign up at the same address.

If you are a Caribbean institution at home reading this and wondering how to be on the receiving end of a Fellow. Write to the Fellows team. Describe the work. Be honest about the scope and the management capacity you have. The institutions that have worked well with our pilot Fellows are the ones that took the matching seriously and managed the engagement like a project, not a favour. The ones that did not, did not.

Why this matters.

I want to close with the specific framing I think the work needs.

This is not a programme of charity. It is a programme of partnership between citizens of the same region who happen to be in different physical places. The notion that the diaspora is somewhere else, doing better, and ought to give back is too one-directional. The reality is that we are one community, with members spread across many cities, and the technology we are now building is the technology that will, more than any previous technology, allow that community to function as one even when its members are far apart. A daughter in Toronto and a mother in San Fernando, in 2025, can have a relationship that looks much like the one they would have had if both lived in the same parish. The same is true of professional networks. The technology to be one community is in our pockets. The institutional structures have lagged. We are catching up.

The Caribbean has spent two centuries exporting its people. That period of our history is not over. Our young people will continue, in significant numbers, to leave for opportunity that is not yet here, and the leaving has often paid the bills of the staying. What is changing is the cost of remaining connected. The cost is collapsing. The opportunity to build, for the first time in our history, a Caribbean professional community that does not lose its members the moment they cross a border, is in front of us. This is the moment to take it.

The chapter co-chairs are: New York, Marlon Phillips, Camille Joseph. Miami, Esteban Reyes, Karima Williams. Toronto, Dale Charles, Janelle Baptiste. London, Nadia Sahadeo, Trevor Edwards. Washington, Marcellus Pierre, Anya Mendes-Watts. They are waiting to hear from you.

---

Aisha Mohan organizes community mental health programmes across the Eastern Caribbean and chairs the CAIRA Diaspora Working Group.

Originally published in The Monthly Intelligence Report, June 2025.