About Jay
As a Turks and Caicos Islander of Jamaican and Ashkenazi Jewish descent that immigrated to America for college and has since made it his second home, Jay’s diverse cultural makeup gives him a unique life experience. Spending his early childhood in Grand Turk, an island of just about 5,000 people, inquisitiveness came naturally to stay entertained. He was known in the family as the kid who always liked to ask why.
Despite growing up on a small island, he was lucky enough to travel internationally and gain exposure leading to an appreciation for different cultures and people throughout his childhood. As he got older, he became known as a direct, analytical, reserved, but cool kid who got along with most people. Then in 2007, life changed dramatically as Jay left a country with about 35,000 people at the time of his departure to one of the most exciting cities in the world – Miami.
Beginning in Marketing because he wasn’t quite sure what subject in business school he wanted to study, he became drawn to understanding the systems that organized our world and switched his major to Economics with a minor in finance. College was undoubtedly one of the most transformative times in his life.
He took an inspirational philosophy class that sparked an ever-increasing interest in the nature of reality and grew into a deep fascination with consciousness. Also, he participated in an exchange program in Washington DC called The Fund for American Studies. There, he interned for a lobbyist organization and developed a fascination with politics after witnessing first-hand how the legalized system of bribery works in America.
He found himself as the only left-leaning student in a conservative program. There, he was able to explore fully and gain respect for an alternate perspective and became comfortable with the skill of agreeably disagreeing.
Jay gained several life-long friends through his time in college, had some of the best times of his life, and started exploring his interest in music as he became involved in the nightlife scene, first as a promoter, then hip hop artist, to earn extra money. Though Jay never quit his other endeavors to pursue music full time, he actively began writing about bits and pieces of his life and putting them into music – and still maintains the passion.
In recent years, he has grown spiritually so the music is not an accurate reflection of where he is today. He plans to release new music that better displays his current mind state – but for the moment, his work culminated in an album called “Modern Classics: A Miami Story” that can be found on all platforms under the moniker ‘6FortyNine’. Seen below is a track he wrote and performed on, featuring Young City, and Jessie Lynn, titled “Wait No More”.
Due to the high cost and large amount of time needed to succeed in the music industry, Jay focused on his professional career and continued working for different financial, education, and nonprofit institutions. Though he would have considered himself to be more politically engaged than the average American, Jay’s time working for the STEM education nonprofit, The Manifezt Foundation, alerted him to how deep America’s systemic racism runs.
After seeing the differences in education and opportunity dependent on your background in America, Jay realized how much he was neglecting politics in his own country and became more engaged in politics in Turks and Caicos. Instantly, he noticed the complete lack of vision for the country coming from the leaders, and used his combined experience in finance and STEM education to develop and promote a plan called The TCITech Initiative. It was meant to be a pathway to diversifying the economy away from Tourism into Technology.
He accomplished this by developing a framework for a comprehensive government strategy based on STEM education, a comprehensive immigration plan, and upgrading digital infrastructure to attract attention to the country.
The push caught enough social media attention to secure a meeting with the first female Premier of Turks and Caicos, (and members of the opposition at the time who are now the reigning government), who was interested in but did ultimately not support the idea. Unfortunately, the idea is on hold as it’s been hard to find the right collaborators to bring it together. However, he still maintains a strong connection with the community and promotes financial literacy and political awakening on social media.
Jay’s spiritual beliefs changed from strictly Christian during that college philosophy class – journeying through atheism and agnosticism, and he currently maintains a strong faith in God, the spiritual oneness. Over the past few years, he has used meditation, breathwork, a plant-based diet, yoga, spreading love, and finding his purpose to manifest a deeper relationship with God. Ascension Media Club is the natural conclusion of this purpose – using his collective life experience to share his input on topics we could all benefit from being more aware of.
