Marie Gill is President and CEO of the award-winning M. Gill & Associates, Inc. which she founded in 1990. In 1999, Ms. Gill joined the management team of the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust as a Financial and Public Relations Consultant, and has recently been confirmed by the Trust Board to continue providing those services on a contractual basis.

A seasoned economic development practitioner, Ms. Gill has worked in various positions in government, community organizations and the private sector, before settling on a career as an entrepreneurial service provider. Born and reared in Jamaica, Ms. Gill spent the early years of her career in urban planning, working on such projects as the Kingston Waterfront Development, Hous- ing for Sugar Workers, the revitalization of the Dunn’s River Falls tourism attraction, and organizing sugar cane workers into forming entrepreneurial sugar cooperatives. In later years, she joined the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica where she was in charge of international marketing and negotiating the purchase of crude oil to service the country’s energy needs.

Throughout her career, Ms. Gill has demonstrated a passion for helping to start and grow small businesses and improving the quality of life for the less fortunate wherever she lived or worked. Upon her arrival in the 

U.S. in 1978, she joined New Jersey’s Newark Coalition for Neighborhoods as its first President, and gained accolades for community organizing, establishing a revolving loan fund and winning attention and funding from the Carter Administration for economic development programs in Newark’s five Wards.

In Miami, she worked for eight years as Deputy Director of the Minority Business Development Center, providing marketing services and technical assis- tance to minority firms in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, and coordinating the nationally acclaimed MED Week program, before launching her company on a full-time basis.

A finance, marketing and public relations professional, Ms. Gill maintained a news column in the Jamaica Daily Gleaner where she covered financial and human-interest news from age 17 until she migrated to the U.S. She is constantly sought after for speaking engagements, and for insights on business and public purpose issues. Ms. Gill received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica; a Mass Communi- cations Diploma from the University of New Brunswick, Canada; and an MBA from the University of Toronto, Canada. She is currently a candidate for the University of Toronto’s doctoral program.

Ms. Gill volunteers her services with various business and economic development organ- izations. She is president and founder of the National Associ- ation of Caribbean Business- women, and has recently been appointed President of the Florida Chapter of the U.S. Woman's Chamber of Commerce headquartered in Washington D.C.