Film­mak­er Danielle Di­ef­fen­thaller is among the 2019 Lau­re­ates in the An­tho­ny N. Sab­ga Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence. The oth­ers are Ja­maican me­dia en­tre­pre­neur Ki­mala Ben­nett, Corey Lane, a civic ac­tivist from Bar­ba­dos and Pro­fes­sor Michael Tay­lor, a cli­mate sci­en­tist from Ja­maica.

The of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment was made yes­ter­day at the Tatil Build­ing in Mar­aval Road, Port-of-Spain.

Di­ef­fen­thaller, a tele­vi­sion and film pro­duc­er, di­rec­tor and writer, has pro­duced ground-break­ing tele­vi­sion se­ries, doc­u­men­taries, re­al­i­ty tele­vi­sion and cor­po­rate and mu­sic videos. Her best-known works in­clude the dra­ma se­ries No Bound­aries, the en­vi­ron­men­tal se­ries Ecow­atch and T&T’s longest run­ning tele­vi­sion se­ries West­wood Park (1997 to 2004)

She got her start in the mid-80s as part of the cast and crew of No Bound­aries and as a re­porter for the then TTT. Dur­ing a short stint at the lo­cal pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Banyan Ltd, she was half of the on­ly lo­cal crew to record the 1990 coup.

Ben­nett, an en­tre­pre­neur­ial vi­sion­ary, is founder and CEO of the ground-break­ing mar­ket­ing firm The Lim­n­ers and Bards (LAB) Ltd. Over the last ten years, LAB has built a rep­u­ta­tion as a ful­ly in­te­grat­ed cre­ative agency and pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny which pro­duces 360-de­gree cam­paigns from con­cept to con­sumer, with high-qual­i­ty con­tent, dig­i­tal man­age­ment, as well as au­dio and film pro­duc­tion.

She is al­so co-founder of Blue Dot Da­ta In­tel­li­gence, which spe­cialis­es in the da­ta an­a­lyt­ics which dri­ve strate­gic frame­works, as well as the founder of spin-off com­pa­nies in­clud­ing Cr8space, a cre­ative pro­fes­sion­al hub which serves as a col­lab­o­ra­tive work and learn­ing space for lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al pro­duc­tion teams, and Scope Caribbean, the Caribbean’s first book­ing data­base for tal­ent and pro­duc­tion lo­ca­tions.

Lane, the youngest Lau­re­ate at age 36, used his own un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stances as an im­pe­tus to help oth­ers in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. At the age of 15, his moth­er died. Around the same time, he wit­nessed the mur­der of a close friend. Com­ing out of those ex­pe­ri­ences, Lane ded­i­cat­ed his life to as­sist­ing at-risk youth grow­ing up in chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances, in­car­cer­at­ed per­sons and peo­ple liv­ing with HIV in Bar­ba­dos.

One of his first ven­tures was the es­tab­lish­ment of the Na­ture Fun Ranch (NFR) in 1998. The ranch works in con­junc­tion with gov­ern­ment re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tres and pro­grammes across Bar­ba­dos to pro­vide guid­ance and respite for young peo­ple who live on the mar­gins. Over its two decades, the Ranch has as­sist­ed more than 2,000 Bar­ba­di­ans by pro­vid­ing them with the foun­da­tion to make the right life choic­es.

Pro­fes­sor Tay­lor, di­rec­tor of the Cli­mate Stud­ies Group at Mona, ded­i­cates him­self to the study of and ac­tion on cli­mate change through­out the Caribbean. He is a re­gion­al leader in cli­mate sci­ence, hav­ing served on many na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­tees. These in­clude most re­cent­ly as a co­or­di­nat­ing lead au­thor for the spe­cial re­port on 1.5 de­grees of the In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC).

He has al­so served as a mem­ber of the Sci­en­tif­ic Steer­ing Com­mit­tee for the CLI­VAR pro­gramme of the World Cli­mate Re­search Pro­gramme; on Ja­maica’s Na­tion­al Cli­mate Change Ad­vi­so­ry Board and as a di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Cli­mate Mod­ellers Con­sor­tium.

Since the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the awards 13 years ago, $17.5 mil­lion has been award­ed to 39 lau­re­ates. The goal is to recog­nise sig­nif­i­cant Caribbean achieve­ment and en­cour­age and sup­port the pur­suit of ex­cel­lence by Caribbean na­tion­als for the ben­e­fit of the re­gion.

Since 2015, awards have been made in four ar­eas: Arts & Let­ters, Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy, Pub­lic & Civic Con­tri­bu­tions and En­tre­pre­neur­ship.

The four Lau­re­ates re­ceive the An­tho­ny N. Sab­ga Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence Gold Medal and Ci­ta­tion to recog­nise and com­mend their achieve­ments and $500,000 to sup­port their work and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment. They are pro­posed by a coun­try’s nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee and se­lect­ed by a re­gion­al pan­el of em­i­nent per­sons.

The An­tho­ny N. Sab­ga Caribbean Awards is the on­ly pro­gramme in the re­gion which seeks out and re­wards out­stand­ing nom­i­nees in their spheres of in­flu­ence. The awards cer­e­mo­ny will be held on March 30, 2019, in Bar­ba­dos.