Dean Moriah is a study in contradictions from his impeccably stylish wardrobe – featuring the world’s most celebrated designers – to the raw, earthy modus operandi that landed him the title of Manager of the Year at the Breezes Montego Bay resort last week.

“Mi really proud a mi,” he told the Observer West with a loud laugh.

Don’t be fooled by the patois, because it is just one manifestation of Moriah’s versatility.

He can switch registers in a minute from patois to the Queen’s English to the Italian he acquired from Cargill Language Institute in Negril just over a decade ago.

The year was 1996.

Moriah had just left the Kenielworth Academy in Hanover’s Sandy Bay where he had studied data processing, to take up a job as a waiter with the Beachcombers club in Negril.

Prior to that he studied Business Administration at the Montego Bay Community College and completed a six-month stint in broadcast journalism with the Alice Rhodd’s Studio Workshop 4922.

“I just wanted a job really and after being turned down for a newsreading job at Radio Jamaica on the basis that my voice still had a youthful cackle, I thought I’d give hospitality a try,” he said.

He was twenty-something and ready for the world.

“I put my all into that job and I soon moved up to become a front office/reservations clerk,” he said.

After two years he left to take up a similar position at the Bar-B-Barn Beach hotel where he also spent two years before moving on to the Swept Away resort in Negril as an entertainment co-ordinator.

He stayed there for seven years, during which he was promoted to the post of Guest Relations Manager, before acquiring a scholarship from the Lincoln University in Missouri where he began read for a degree in Human Resource Management.

He didn’t finish, however, as news that his beloved grandmother, Isabelle Lewis, was ill brought him home.

On returning he gained employment with Breezes Grand Lido in Negril for a about four months before transferring to Breezes Montego Bay.

It was here his passion for inner-city outreach work really came into its own.

His involvement in the Read to Achieve and Motivate to elevate programmes with the American National Basket Association and National Football League respectively as well as the many projects he’s brokered on behalf of his alma maters – Mount Peto Basic, Mount Peto Primary and the Herbert Morrison High schools – stand testimony.

Throughout it all the message – aspiration to better things regardless of the circumstances – has been consistent.

“I had always had a penchant for helping other people because of how my grandmother raised me. I was never the selfish type,” he said.

On the creative side, he’s proud – among other achievements – of having brought an episode of the hit Comedy Central show live to Breezes Montego Bay last year.

“I think that makes for one of my proudest achievements on the entertainment side because it took a lot to pull it off,” he said.