2023 Award Recipients
For its 6th consecutive year, Afropolitan Canada has been celebrating and honouring the outstanding achievements of women who have made significant impacts in their respective fields in Canada.
The 2023 award recipients are as follows:
The Entrepreneurship Award
The Entrepreneurship Award
Antuanette Gomez
CEO OF PEAK PHARM LABS & PLEASURE PEAKS
Antuanette Gomez is the CEO of Pleasure Peaks, which specialized in developing products designed to enhance sexual pleasure by using cannabis. She is also the co-founded Peak Pharm Labs.
Antuanette is committed to educating the public about the benefits of cannabis for sexual health and wellness. She regularly speaks at conferences and events to promote the use of cannabis as a safe and effective alternative to traditional pharmaceuticals.
In addition, Antuanette is dedicated to promoting inclusivity and diversity within the cannabis industry. She has been a vocal advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and has worked to make her company and its products more gender-inclusive.
Antuanette Gomez inspires people by being a trailblazer in the cannabis industry and using her platform to advocate for social justice and equality.
The Influencer Award
Reni Odetoyinbo
founder of Reni The Resource
& content strategist
Reni Odetoyinbo is a content creator & marketing consultant based in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. On her YouTube channel, ‘xoreni’, she shares resources about career development and financial literacy.
After purchasing her first property at the age of 23, she began to share her knowledge with others with the goal of helping people understand “adulting”.
She helps them become more financially literate and shares tips to help them excel in their careers.
From finance to career and lifestyle content, Reni aims to make complex topics, simple.
Reni is a winner of the Bay St Bull 30 under 30 award and an alumnus of YouTube Black Class of 2022, an accelerator program run by Google to build her channel.
The Leadership Award
Carelle Lahouri
Speaker, Motivatitor, business consultant & BLOGGER/influencer - INSTANT DU PALAIS
Speaker, Motivator, Business consultant and most importantly a successful entrepreneur, Carelle is the definition of an inclusive leader.
She hosts panels on leadership, entrepreneurship, and all things related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Passionate about food, Carelle is also a blogger/influencer.
She promotes her culture through various recipes that she shares with her engaged community of over 140,000 followers on social media (@instantdupalais). On top of all this, Carelle has a 9 to 5 job as a Business Development Officer.
Her role is to support entrepreneurs in their journey. Carelle was the first to introduce the concept of exclusive online catering with home delivery.
She is currently working on the opening of the first West African luxury restaurant in Ontario which should open next summer.
The Youth Leadership Award
Jasmine Uboma
founder & CEO OF beyondmath
Jasmine Uboma is a 19 years old second year student of Statistics at the University of Western, Ontario, Canada and the Director, women in STEM.
Jasmine founded Beyond Math to allow children as young as 8 years old to begin developing critical and analytical thinking skills by understanding that the world is full of puzzles.
Jasmine has noticed the absence of people from the Black community in her math classes. Her passion is to break the stereotype that Black people are only good at sports, but also at technology.
Jasmine has been privileged to be honored with many awards including Rising Star award from NNC and Youth excellence Award.
She was recognized by the Nigerian Ambassador to Canada in commendation of her work.
Recently, she was featured on CBC to highlight her story.
The Changemaker Award
Rokhaya Gueye
founder & CARPENTER, CEO & CO-FOUNDER OF GLOBAL CONNECTION VENTURE, CHAIR OF THE SISTERS IN THE BROTHERHOOD CAREER COACH & OUTREACH STRATEGIST
Rokhaya Gueye is a mentor, a coach, a community organizer, a carpenter, an interpreter, and a serial entrepreneur. As a community servant, Rokhaya has, for the past 27 years, volunteered her time by working tirelessly to help various non-profit organizations both locally and abroad such as Member of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee of the Carpenters Local 27.
As an entrepreneur, she is the co-founder of Global Connection Venture and Afya Choices.
Rokhaya is passionate about social change, women & youth empowerment, construction, technology, community economic development and philanthropy.
She also believes that, “Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful!’’