Caribbean and Americas Intellectual Property Organization
Promoting intellectual property rights and innovation
​Executive Director
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Dr. Abiola Inniss
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Dr. Abiola Inniss is a legal scholar, policy analyst, and public intellectual widely regarded as the Architect of Caribbean Intellectual Property. Her pioneering work established the foundations of Caribbean IP as a distinct scholarly field, shaping regional understanding of how law, culture, and economic development intersect. She continues to redefine the landscape of intellectual property and digital governance across the Caribbean through rigorous research, structural analysis, and visionary policy thinking.
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Her scholarship spans law, political economy, and technology, with a particular focus on how global governance systems influence the Caribbean’s autonomy, cultural identity, and economic futures. Dr. Inniss is internationally recognized for advancing the discourse on Caribbean digital sovereignty and for introducing influential concepts—most notably the “digital plantation”—that reframe how small states understand power in the age of artificial intelligence.
Dr. Inniss’s work is defined by clarity, accessibility, and a deep commitment to public engagement. She excels at translating complex legal and technical issues into frameworks that policymakers, practitioners, and citizens can use to make informed decisions. Whether through scholarly writing, visual explainers, podcasts, or public lectures, she treats knowledge as a tool for empowerment and collective agency.
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Her intellectual approach is grounded in a distinctly Caribbean perspective. Dr. Inniss centers regional histories, identities, and epistemologies as legitimate sources of theory, challenging Euro-American dominance in global governance discourse. By connecting contemporary digital infrastructures to longer histories of extraction and dependency, she offers a powerful lens for understanding the region’s present challenges and future opportunities.
A forward-looking thinker, Dr. Inniss approaches governance as ecosystem design. She maps the legal, institutional, and cultural capacities the Caribbean must build to thrive in the digital age, anticipating emerging risks while outlining practical pathways toward resilience, autonomy, and cultural sovereignty.
Beyond her research, Dr. Inniss is committed to capacity building and collaborative knowledge production across the Caribbean and its diaspora. She works to expand regional competence in digital governance, intellectual property, and nonprofit regulation, ensuring that Caribbean voices shape the policies and technologies that will define the next century.
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Her mission is both simple and ambitious: to help the Caribbean understand the systems that shape it, imagine futures beyond inherited constraints, and build the institutional strength required to claim its place in the global digital order.
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Founding Director
Lennon Richards
Lennon R. Richards EMBA, Ph. D (c) is a Ph.D. researcher at Walden University U.S.A in Public Policy and Administration, with an emphasis in Public Management andLeadership, a business executive, politcian, and educator in Jamaica.
Mr. Richards brings a wealth of knowledge in finance, business management, public policy and administration, Caribbean business, as well as Caribbean politics. A former youth leader and youth ambassador; he was former vice president for the National Youth Leaders Association, and was a representative at various youth conferences for his country.
He is the owner of business concerns in Jamaica and has contributed many years of service in the public good as a member and chairman of several public administrative and school boards. He is public speaker and has addressed many events.
