Nickeria Smickle: Redefining success for the next generation of Caribbean women
NICKERIA Smickle built a company, rebuilt communities after a hurricane, and now wants to prove that there’s more than one way to make it.
Ask Smickle for her formula and she won’t give you a business-school answer, instead she says, “faith, hunger, and a touch of delusion”.
It is a deceptively simple recipe for a woman who has spent the last six years proving that the most successful people are often the ones bold enough to begin before anyone else believes in them.
Smickle is the founder and chief executive officer of A-List Marketing & Entertainment Group and a 2026 Ignite Caribbean 30 Under 30 honouree in entrepreneurship and philanthropy.
But the title she is most interested in expanding isn’t her own. It’s the definition of success itself.
The instinct to give showed up early. At nine years old Smickle was selling candies at school and sharing her lunch money with classmates who had none. At 18, she rode the bus from Mandeville to Kingston to shoot photography at events and volunteer wherever she was needed. By 24 she was running a business and executing her own charity initiatives.
“My passion for service has always been at the core of my journey,” said Smickle.
Long before the company, that meant painting rooms for homeless women and children, joining community outreach, and showing up for beach clean-ups. The scale grew. The instinct never changed.
What sets Smickle apart is not just what she has built, but what she believes. Her argument is direct — not every child is meant to become a lawyer, teacher or doctor, and the ones who become musicians, painters, beauty professionals or entrepreneurs deserve to see their path celebrated too.
She is putting structure behind the belief. In late 2025, she registered the Anchor of Love JA Foundation in honour of her late mother. Its flagship project is Jamaica’s first school tour dedicated to non-traditional careers in the arts and entertainment, designed to show students that success can take a shape no one ever drew for them.
The philosophy is matched by a record. Through A-List Marketing & Entertainment Group, Smickle’s back-to-school programme in the west Kingston community of Tivoli Gardens reaches more than 700 students every year, from early childhood through tertiary level, and employs residents from the communities it serves.
Her annual Gift of Hope Christmas outreach, in partnership with Dolla Financial Services, brings toys, food, and essentials to families across Kingston each holiday season.
When Hurricane Melissa devastated western Jamaica, she answered with a three-phase relief effort. Phase one, with PROVEN Wealth, delivered supplies to Petersfield, Darliston, and Water Works in Westmoreland. Phase two, Joy to the West, sent her team out of Kingston before sunrise on December 24, 2025, to support young mothers at the Women’s Centre of Jamaica Foundation in Savanna-la-Mar; students at Llandilo School of Special Education; and families on Crooke Street, where a community space became a day of games, bounce houses, and supplies.
Phase three, now in development, will re-roof homes for the families hit hardest.
For all the work, Smickle is candid about how rarely she stops to acknowledge herself. “I want to say something I do not say often: I am proud of myself,” she declared. “I’m proud that I did not give up and proud that I kept believing in my vision even when others questioned it.“
She is already looking past the milestone. By 2030, she plans to expand to the United States and the Caribbean, growing both the business and the foundation that carries her mother’s name.
“Entrepreneurship is not only about building a successful company; it is about building stronger communities,” she said. “Success is measured not by personal achievements alone, but by the number of lives uplifted along the way. For the dreamers, the believers, and the ones bold enough to begin, this one is for you.”
