Five Caribbean lead­ers in sci­ence, civic work, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and the arts have been named as the 2026 re­cip­i­ents of the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Ex­cel­lence Awards.

The lau­re­ates are Pro­fes­sor Tan­necia Stephen­son, Dr Niv­en R Narain, Shamelle Rice, Sheena Rose and Dean Nev­ers.

The an­nounce­ment was made from Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day via video stream.

Pro­fes­sor Stephen­son is a cli­mate sci­en­tist and co-di­rec­tor of the Cli­mate Stud­ies Group, Mona. Her work fo­cus­es on re­gion­al cli­mate change re­search and the de­vel­op­ment of tools and dig­i­tal plat­forms that sup­port pol­i­cy de­ci­sions across the Caribbean.

Dr Narain is a Guyana-born Amer­i­can biotech in­no­va­tor and co-founder and pres­i­dent of a Boston-based biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny. He de­vel­oped an ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence-pow­ered drug dis­cov­ery plat­form that has gen­er­at­ed about 650 patents, more than 100 sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tions and dozens of glob­al re­search part­ner­ships.

Shamelle Rice is the founder and di­rec­tor of Jabez House, a reg­is­tered char­i­ty in Bar­ba­dos that has pro­vid­ed vo­ca­tion­al train­ing, job place­ment, men­tal health sup­port, hous­ing and ba­sic needs as­sis­tance to women in­volved in sex work since 2012. The or­gan­i­sa­tion has sup­port­ed more than 1,000 women across the Caribbean, many of whom are moth­ers.

Sheena Rose is a vi­su­al artist from Bar­ba­dos whose work spans paint­ing, per­for­mance, mu­rals and mixed me­dia. Her art has been shown in so­lo ex­hi­bi­tions in Lon­don, New York, Tai­wan and across the Caribbean.

A 2014 Ful­bright schol­ar, her work has ap­peared in in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia and on the cov­ers of Caribbean pub­li­ca­tions. She has re­ceived a Dis­tin­guished Alum­ni Award from the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Greens­boro and has par­tic­i­pat­ed in artist res­i­den­cies in Trinidad, South Africa, Suri­name, the Unit­ed States and the Nether­lands. Rose al­so men­tors emerg­ing artists from the re­gion.

Dean Nev­ers is a Ja­maican telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions en­gi­neer and the founder and CEO of Kon­nex Ser­vices Ltd. The com­pa­ny pro­vides tele­com, re­new­able en­er­gy and in­dus­tri­al net­work so­lu­tions across ten Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries and em­ploys hun­dreds of peo­ple. A for­mer Ca­ble and Wire­less en­gi­neer, Nev­ers has led the com­pa­ny from a net loss in its first year to an­nu­al rev­enues ex­ceed­ing US$20 mil­lion.

He has re­ceived the Or­der of Dis­tinc­tion from the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica.

Each award cat­e­go­ry car­ries the lo­cal cur­ren­cy equiv­a­lent of $500,000 to sup­port on­go­ing work that ben­e­fits the Caribbean re­gion. The of­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ny will take place lat­er this year.

2026 An­tho­ny N. Sab­ga Caribbean Ex­cel­lence Award Lau­re­ates

Pro­fes­sor Tan­necia Stephen­son – Ja­maica (Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy)

Dr Niv­en R. Narain – Guyana / Unit­ed States (Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy)

Shamelle Rice – Bar­ba­dos (Pub­lic & Civic Con­tri­bu­tions)

Sheena Rose – Bar­ba­dos (Arts & Let­ters)

Dean Nev­ers – Ja­maica (En­tre­pre­neur­ship)