On Monday, New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams honored 4 Caribbean nationals throughout his annual grand Caribbean-American Heritage Month Celebration at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence on East 88th St., Higher East Facet, Manhattan.
The honorees had been: Angela P. Sealy, the Trinidadian-born former chairperson and treasurer, present member and senior advisor of the Brooklyn-based West Indian American Day Carnival Affiliation (WIADCA); Jacqueline T. Lopardo, a Staten Island-born strategic authorized counselor, advertising and branding govt, who boasts of a “highly effective Caribbean lineage,” with Barbadian, Montserratian, Antiguan and Trinidadian roots; Alexandra Actie, St. Lucian-born, former New York Metropolis Corrections Officer and founding member of the St. Lucia Home Basis, an umbrella group representing a number of St. Lucian teams in New York Metropolis; Grenadian Worldwide DJ Kevin Crown; and Claudia Cynthia Smith, daughter of Allan and Gloria Smith of Caribbean descent, founders and homeowners of the favored Allan’s Bakery on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn.
Claudia was not current on the celebration to personally obtain the proclamation.
Sealy, who celebrated her ninetieth birthday on Jan. 11, thanked the mayor for “all he had performed for the Caribbean group.”
Lopardo additionally thanked Mayor Adams for the proclamation, stating it was “an honor to obtain this award and this acknowledgement.
“I really like my roots and tradition,” she added. “I’ve been in group service for all of my life, and my Caribbean heritage is all the things to me.”
Trinidadian-born Hazra Ali, the mayor’s Group Lead on planning the Caribbean-American Heritage Month Celebration at Gracie Mansion, mentioned: “This yr, we rejoice 20 years of Caribbean-American Heritage Month. Our objective for the celebrations is two-fold: to boost consciousness of the variety and fantastic thing about our area as a multicultural and multi-ethnic society, and to spotlight our contributions to this, our new dwelling, the American tradition.
“As Caribbean People, we thank the mayor for his varied initiatives and sort gestures in direction of our group,” added Ali, stating that many Caribbean People work in Adams’s administration, “holding workplace as excessive as commissioner and deputy commissioners.”
Extra concerning the honorees
Angela Sealy
Born on Jan. 11, 1935, Sealy has been concerned in WIADCA Carnival actions since its inception. She turned energetic with a small group of Carnival fans who targeted on creating methods to relocate the Harlem Carnival Parade to Brooklyn within the late Sixties.
Sealy turned an official WIADCA member in 1967 and, via this cultural work, alongside along with her fellow WIADCA members, solid a 58-year legacy of what we all know immediately because the Labor Day Parade or “New York Caribbean Carnival Week & Parade” – “NYC’s Best Present on Earth.”
Sealy was a part of the group negotiating WIADCA’s new workplace house on the Main Owens Group Heart on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn.
In the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, she labored alongside elected officers to create WIADCA Cares, a human useful resource initiative that addressed meals and maternal well being insecurity.
Jacqueline T. Lopardo, Esq.
Lopardo boasts over 20 years of expertise within the leisure business.
Her profession spans the music, movie, sports activities and promoting industries, representing shoppers resembling Mike Tyson’s Legends Solely League, The Wu-Tang Clan, Denise “Saucy Wow” Belfon, Sony Company of America, The Rza, Tradition Mix Sound, Fab 5 Freddy, Ford, Lincoln, Colgate, Amtrak, Whirlpool, and Door Sprint and Venmo.
Lopardo’s huge expertise consists of negotiation, drafting, and reviewing of recording agreements, synchronization licenses, pattern rights, director/screenwriter agreements, expertise service agreements, and social media influencer agreements.
She handles assessment and authorized approval of artistic property for shopper productions (TV, Radio, Net/Digital, and many others.), in addition to the creation of personnel insurance policies and tips, together with insurance policies within the ever-changing social media realm.
Although she possesses a powerful transactional background, Lopardo additionally brings her experience to the courtroom as a litigator, with one among her largest wins ending in a judgment for upwards of $1 1million in a copyright infringement/breach of contract case earlier than the US District Court docket, Southern District of New York.
Lopardo mentioned her present litigation with america Patent & Trademark Workplace is about to make “a historic impression on the Reggae music business.”
Her prowess and unstoppable management are answerable for single-handedly creating the first-ever in-house Enterprise and Authorized Affairs Division for Uniworld Group, the longest-standing multicultural promoting company within the U.S, which Byron Lewis, the Godfather of Black Media, based.
Lopardo graduated along with her BS in human and organizational growth in 1996, and labored her final yr helping within the creation of the curriculum and necessities essential for college students wishing to minor in African Diaspora Research, a tutorial program that Vanderbilt College made an official programmatic minor in 2005.
She acquired her Juris Physician from the Benjamin N. Cardozo College of Regulation and was admitted to the New York State Bar in Might 2005.
Lopardo is licensed to face within the Southern and Jap US District Courts of New York.
She is a member of Mayor Adams’s Caribbean Advisory Committee
Alexandra Actie
After migrating to america in 1976, Actie, a single mom of three, took a job as a New York Metropolis Corrections Officer on Rikers Island to help her household. She retired from that place in 2005.
Not one to stay idle, Actie quickly adopted her lifelong ardour for cooking, launching a Caribbean catering enterprise and proudly bringing the colourful flavors and traditions of St. Lucia to the New York group.
In 2010, she turned one of many founding members of the St. Lucia Home Basis. She served two consecutive phrases as vice chairman and has been chairperson of the inspiration’s leisure committee since 2011. In that position, she has led a loyal group organizing large-scale cultural occasions and fundraisers supporting the inspiration’s mission.
In 2024, Actie was appointed by the Consulate Common of St. Lucia in New York as chair of the St. Lucia Home’s Administration Committee.
Moreover, Actie is a founding member of 4Roots Leisure Group, a community-based entity answerable for, amongst different issues, inaugurating the Miss St. Lucia USA Pageant in New York.
Kevin Crown
Crown, dubbed the “Pure Born Membership Killa,” is “distinct“ in partaking his viewers and protecting them mesmerized whereas delivering a “real, but evocative“ efficiency that captivates a crowd even days later.
Crown mentioned he started DJing at 12, following in his father’s footsteps.
By 16, he booked his first skilled gig and graduated from Brooklyn Technical Excessive College concurrently.
Crown mentioned he turned a Native 3 electrician, engaged on main metropolis initiatives, together with being a part of the crew that helped construct the long-lasting Barclays Heart in Brooklyn.
However Crown mentioned he took a leap of religion and determined to place his ardour for music on the forefront. He left the exhausting hat behind and by no means appeared again.
Years later, Crown mentioned he stood in entrance of 20,000 folks in that constructing, opening for a historic Machel Montano live performance.
In 2003, Crown launched his first single, “Comply with Me,“ alongside Canadian celebrity Mr. Killa, marking his early entry into music manufacturing and artistry.
From there, Crown constructed a reputation for himself throughout the worldwide stage, performing in international locations resembling Japan, London, Mexico, Canada, and throughout the US, in addition to in a number of Caribbean islands, together with Anguilla, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Martin, Haiti, Bermuda, Guyana, US Virgin Islands, and St. Kitts and Nevis.
Claudia Cynthia Smith
In 1980, Smith acquired her Bachelor of Arts diploma from Adelphi College and was a proud member of Delta Sigma Pi.
After commencement, she examined her expertise by occupying a number of positions within the office, together with as a Court docket Stenographer for Mineola courts. She then went on to work for the regulation agency Dehert Worth & Rhodes.
Later, Smith turned the chief supervisor of Native 608, retiring in 2010.
Concurrently, she labored at Allan’s Bakery underneath the watchful eye of her father, Allan, the place she found, alongside along with her two sisters, Delia and Sharon, the acumen and fervour for baking and enhancing the unique pastries of their West Indian mother and father.
All through her life and juggling a number of jobs, Smith mentioned she all the time maintained a love for the group by taking part in occasions resembling annual most cancers walks and different fundraising celebrations.
Within the early 2000s, Smith and her two sisters assumed accountability of Allan’s Bakery.
Smith mentioned her nephew, Christian, quickly “got here on board and additional expanded the bakery to a second location within the Decrease East Facet of Manhattan.”
In line with their entrepreneurial spirit, Smith mentioned she and her household opened an occasion house, Hidden Gem by Allan’s and Allan’s Bar and Café.
Smith mentioned she and her sisters stand by Allans’s Bakery’s slogan, “‘ High quality is our Ardour‘, as a result of we love folks to be happy and completely happy.“
