ANNE MARIE STEWART
Executive Producer and Creator
Anne-Marie is an independent management consultant with over thirty years’ experience in helping to create and lead effective organisations. Her professional career spans the public, private and voluntary sectors. She also consults to international development agencies. Her areas of expertise usually focus on Diversity and Equity and include: Organizational change management ; Strategic planning and implementation; Human resources management and development; Policy and program evaluation.
Previously, she served as an Assistant Deputy Minister with the Ontario Government. Prior to this, she was Superintendent of Human Resources at the Toronto Board of Education where she had overall accountability for the recruitment, development and placement of educational administrators and teachers at every level in the system. She began her professional career in the private sector as a Senior Organization Development Consultant to the President at ManuLife with responsibility for recruiting and training senior officers across Canada and the United States.
FRANCES ANNE SOLOMON
Producer / Director
Frances-Anne Solomon is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and producer in film, TV, radio, theatre, and new media.
Born in England of Trinidadian parents, she was raised and educated in the Caribbean and Canada before moving to Great Britain where she built a successful career with the BBC as a TV Drama Producer and Executive Producer. She moved to Toronto in 2000, where she continued to create, write, direct, and produce her own projects. Her most recent film, A Winter Tale, received many prestigious international awards, including most recently at FESPACO 2009 (Africa’s Oscars held biannually in Burkina Faso (West Africa) where it was won Special Mention in The Paul Robeson Diaspora Category.
Her other directing credits include the feature film Peggy Su!(BBC Films, 1997); the drama What My Mother Told Me(Channel 4 1995), and Bideshi (Briish Film Institute 1994); and documentaries Literature Alive (Bravo!/OMNI, 2006), Reunion (BBC,1993), and I Is A Long Memoried Woman (Arts Council of England 1991).
She was the Co-creator, Producer and Director of Lord Have Mercy! Canada’s Caribbean hit sitcom, which aired on Vision TV, Toronto/one, Showcase and APTN in 2003 and was nominated for two Gemini Awards: Best Comedy series, and Best Individual Performer (Leonie Forbes).
Frances-Anne is the founder and CEO of the CaribbeanTales Group of Companies, including CaribbeanTales.ca, an educational not for profit company based in Canada, the CaribbeanTales Film Festival Group, producing marketing events and festivals in Toronto, Barbados and New York, and CaribbeanTales Worldwide Distribution, the region’s first full-service film sales and distribution company for Caribbean-themed content.
She began her television career at Banyan Productions in Trinidad, studied Theatre at the University of Toronto with Steve Martineau and Ken Gass, and poetry with Jay MacPherson. She trained as a film director in the UK at Bristol University’s RFT Programme and the prestigious BBC Drama Directors Course.
LISA WICKHAM
Executive Producer
Lisa Wickham is a media producer-director-TV personality in Trinidad and Tobago. She is a former presenter with Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT) where she was the host of the daily morning prime-time news and talk show T&T This Morning (2002–05), host of the daily mid-morning talk show Community Dateline, (1999–2000) host of the weekly teen talent show Party Time (1987–89) and cast member and segment host of the weekly children’s show Rikki Tikki(1973–85). Wickham started her career on television at the age of six. She is the CEO of Imagine Media International Limited. Imagine Media is best known for its line of television productions under the E-Zone Entertainment brand.
Wickham is the producer-director and host of the Caribbean Entertainment TV show The E-Zone (2002–present), which has been aired in 20 Caribbean countries, in Canada on Omni 1 and in the US on Centric/BET J.