Leadership

Enith Williams founded and manages the Reparations Finance Lab after an international career in economic and social development and finance. She has held senior positions as an international banker with Merrill Lynch in New York City and with the Government of Jamaica, where she worked with the Planning Institute of Jamaica and the Jamaica Investment Promotions Agency, Jampro. Early in her career, she was a program associate, with the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation where she worked on a multi-stakeholder program to address homelessness in New York City. She then moved on to work with the New York City Housing Partnership in its ground breaking program to engage with local entrepreneurs to secure their participation in the economic revitalization that was underway in Central Harlem and the South Bronx in the early 1990s. As a native of Jamaica, and an immigrant to the United States, Enith has lived and worked in both countries throughout her professional career and has seen and experienced first-hand the impact of the capital markets and financial decision making on economically disadvantaged individuals, communities and countries.

She hopes to utilize this unique insight into crafting a new area of exploration at 17 Asset Management around closing the Black-White wealth gap by reconnecting the history and economics of the African Slave Trade, and the involvement of the global financial markets in that endeavor. She hopes to engage with thought leaders and market players to craft new solutions that can positively impact on the wealth disparity that continues to exist for the descendants of that horrific trade.

Enith is the Founder of the Downtown Kingston Music Theatre, a social intervention program that uses musical theatre to engage the youth of the inner-city communities of Downtown Kingston. She is a published author of short stories and poems based on her memories of growing up in rural Jamaica and her lived experience as a mother, and woman of African ancestry.