Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Jael Joseph is a dy­nam­ic me­dia pow­er­house and award-win­ning sto­ry­teller from Do­mini­ca. With over 15 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in mar­ket­ing and me­dia pro­duc­tion, she has made a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact in the in­dus­try, bring­ing Caribbean voic­es to the fore.

Joseph is well known and loved for her en­gag­ing di­a­logues with Caribbean lu­mi­nar­ies, fos­ter­ing a deep­er con­nec­tion to the re­gion’s rich cul­ture and di­ver­si­fy­ing voic­es heard on an in­ter­na­tion­al scale.

Her work as a film­mak­er has gar­nered in­ter­na­tion­al ac­claim, in­clud­ing the pres­ti­gious Best Short Doc­u­men­tary award at the Caribbean Tales In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val in 2023.

In ad­di­tion to her me­dia pro­duc­tion work, Joseph is a pas­sion­ate ad­vo­cate for di­ver­si­ty and equal­i­ty. She found­ed a plat­form–Black­Island­Girl.com–cel­e­brat­ing the ex­pe­ri­ences of Black Caribbean peo­ple, aim­ing to unite and em­pow­er the com­mu­ni­ty.

Joseph’s in­flu­ence ex­tends to her role as an ed­u­ca­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guelph-Hum­ber, where she im­parts her ex­per­tise to the next gen­er­a­tion of me­dia pro­fes­sion­als.

Her au­then­tic voice and com­pelling nar­ra­tive make her a lead­ing in­flu­encer, in­spir­ing in­di­vid­u­als across the di­as­po­ra. Joseph was born and raised on the North coast of Do­mini­ca in a vil­lage called Vielle-Casse, and she grew up as one of four girls.

Orig­i­nal­ly a teacher, her fa­ther even­tu­al­ly struck out as an en­tre­pre­neur, and she cred­its qui­et­ly ob­serv­ing him as “the source of my own en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it.”

At 16, she moved to Cana­da and be­came a cos­met­ic man­ag­er while al­so study­ing med­ical aes­thet­ics. When her moth­er fell ill in 2008 with can­cer, Joseph re­turned to Do­mini­ca to help care for her, and it was dur­ing this pe­ri­od of re­turn, that she fell in love with the me­dia.

“Peo­ple al­ways told me I had a nice voice, and that I should do ra­dio,” she re­mem­bers, “and then I got an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work at Q 95 FM Ra­dio Sta­tion in Do­mini­ca, and that kick-start­ed my ca­reer in the field.”

Ex­pect­ing her sec­ond child, Joseph re­turned to Cana­da in 2017, just ahead of the dev­as­tat­ing land­fall of Hur­ri­cane Maria in Do­mini­ca. Armed with her new­found love for the me­dia, she re­turned to school with two young chil­dren in tow and did a Bach­e­lor’s De­gree in Jour­nal­ism at Ry­er­son Uni­ver­si­ty in Cana­da.

Black­Island­Girl.com was launched in 2021 as Joseph’s cap­stone project in her fi­nal year of uni­ver­si­ty, as an ode to her­self and the “im­mi­grant, black women that were all around me,” with whom she shared lived ex­pe­ri­ences. She re­mem­bers her time in uni­ver­si­ty as piv­otal, where she learned to ap­pre­ci­ate her­self, es­pe­cial­ly through em­brac­ing her nat­ur­al hair, and re­leas­ing her in­se­cu­ri­ties.

Af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, she went back to Do­mini­ca, and reg­is­tered her com­pa­ny as Black Is­land Girl Mul­ti­me­dia. In Do­mini­ca, she ex­pand­ed the frame of her plat­form, by re­search­ing and in­cor­po­rat­ing the unique in­dige­nous ex­pe­ri­ence of the Kali­na­go peo­ple of Do­mini­ca. It was this re­search that birthed her award-win­ning short film, “Ter­ri­to­ry”.

A short film fo­cused on the in­dige­nous peo­ple of Do­mini­ca, where Joseph chron­i­cles ten days fol­low­ing the de­scen­dants of the is­land’s first peo­ple, shin­ing light on their in­di­vid­ual and com­mu­nal chal­lenges as res­i­dents of Do­mini­ca’s Kali­na­go Ter­ri­to­ry, in­clud­ing the com­mu­ni­ty’s re­cov­ery from Hur­ri­cane Maria and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

This film was Joseph’s first sub­mis­sion to a com­pe­ti­tion, and it won Best Short Doc­u­men­tary at the 18th An­nu­al Caribbean Tales Film Fes­ti­val in Toron­to in 2023.

Joseph has now re­launched Black­Island­Girl.com and the new­ly re­vamped site fea­tures a broad range of con­tent sec­tions, in­clud­ing Beau­ty, Busi­ness, Cul­ture, En­ter­tain­ment, Health and Well­ness, Pol­i­tics, and “The BIG Fea­ture,” a spot­light seg­ment fo­cus­ing on in-depth sto­ries and pro­files. In ad­di­tion to ar­ti­cles and fea­tures, the site’s new “What’s New” sec­tion pro­vides event pro­mot­ers with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to list their events, mak­ing Black Is­land Girl a go-to source for cul­tur­al and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment.

One of the most sig­nif­i­cant changes in this re­launch is that Joseph now in­cor­po­rates her me­dia projects as the main fo­cus of the site, and al­so fea­tures Black men’s per­spec­tives, to in­cor­po­rate their is­sues in­to the plat­form’s nar­ra­tive.

Joseph’s prowess in the me­dia is un­der­scored by her be­lief in her­self and her voice. She cred­its her fa­ther’s en­cour­age­ment, as “he en­cour­aged me to be talk­a­tive, and not shy away from speak­ing up.”

This has al­lowed her to not on­ly project her voice but am­pli­fy the voic­es of those who are voice­less. “Any time I get a mic, and I have to make noise for a cause I care about, I’ll make noise.”

In­sist­ing that her plat­form has a sto­ry for every­one, she brings to­geth­er Caribbean voic­es and per­spec­tives in one place, to cre­ate what she fond­ly refers to as, “not just a Do­mini­can thing, and not just a girl thing, but a true black is­land ting!”