Founder & History

Ingrid Riley is a Caribbean tech pioneer, media entrepreneur & creator, startup advisor, investor, and expert event producer. She is the Founder of Silicon Caribe.

She’s produced 300+ tech events across 10 Caribbean Countries plus US, and UK Diaspora Cities of London, New York, and Miami,  building a community of > 5,000+ tech CEOs, leaders, and operators, and was dubbed the “Caribbean Tech Queen” by Caribbean Media. She founded Kingston BETA, the Caribbean’s first and longest-running tech community event and startup stage. For her work, she received both the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica  Game Changer Award ( 2012) and Techlinks Caribbean Innovators Game Changer Award ( 2013).

Ingrid’s platform today reaches over 100,000+ tech founders, operators, and investors. She’s helped scores of people get jobs, hire talent, get press, raise money, and scale their companies.

Areas of Expertise:

• Producing and Hosting world-class events

• Advancing your career in tech

. Connecting to a global network and investor cash for your digital business. 

• Landing a competitive tech job

• Kickstart and Building a sustainable community

• Building a professional network

. Building a digital media brand

What I believe

“I believe we live in the age of unprecedented economic opportunity because of technology. Anyone anywhere in the world, using technologies like the Internet, their mind, and time, can create something that fundamentally changes the way we live, work, and play.

I like the kind of level playing field it presents to us here in the Caribbean and the Diaspora. It’s a fantastic opportunity for stunning innovations we can create when paired with what we do best in the world. It can create significant and lasting success in individual Caribbean countries and our Region and position us better in the Global Digital Economy.“ 

– Ingrid Riley, Founder – SiliconCaribe

INDUSTRY AWARDS

Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica  Game Changer Award ( 2012)

Techlinks Caribbean Innovators Game Changer Award ( 2013)

BLOG MEDIA AWARDS

Best Technology Blog 2011 (Jamaica Blog Awards)

Best Technology Blog 2010 ( Jamaica Blog Awards)

Blog of the Year 2010 ( Jamaica Blog Awards)

SiliconCaribe’s Back Story

SiliconCaribe started as a blog and was founded first as a passion project by Founder Ingrid Riley in 2005 and was initially named CaribbeanTechNews, which became SiliconCaribe in 2007.  Then it went on to kickstart a movement and continues to grow an ecosystem of  Media, Events, and Communities that is focused on Entrepreneurship, Investing, and Digital Culture. #DigitalCaribbean.

We KICKSTARTED  A Tech Startup Community and Movement, KINGSTON BETA

As a tech entrepreneur who had both a media and marketing brand at the time, it certainly wasn’t my intention to kickstart a tech startup community or champion a Caribbean Tech Entrepreneurship Movement, I just wanted to bring together people who loved the Internet and Technology like I did, in a single place and regularly so we could share our stories to inspire and learn from each other. That spawned the Kingston BETA event series and our vision and mission for SiliconCaribe evolved from doing that.

We wanted to continue to connect people and information from disparate parts of the tech industry, creative and business community – to build a community and make a difference — there were zero technology industry meetups, blogs, tech resources, and publications— we had to start somewhere — something had to change. We became passionate about catalyzing this change. We saw how important it was to have more individuals in technology and in business as entrepreneurs, developers, creatives, corporate executives, mentors, and investors talking to each other, sharing their stories, and encouraging others to take advantage of the opportunities of the Digital Age.

So it started as a passion project — me and my then business partner Susan LeeQuee, started by hosting our first networking meetup called Kingston BETA in January 2007 – which had 90 attendees, from 4 Caribbean countries. After a few years, mostly operating as a passion project, being pulled by the momentum of the growing community, partnerships, and connections, and the rise of Digital Caribbean, Kingston BETA became the first and longest-running and highly impactful tech startup community event in the Caribbean.

SiliconCaribe has been credited and awarded with kickstarting the Jamaican and Caribbean Startup Movement and that has led to me working with governments, universities, international development agencies, large corporate brands, and youth groups on various initiatives and we’ve only just begun.

Kingston BETA Meetup – June, 2018, JAMPRO HQ Auditorium.