International recording artist and Caribbean music ambassador, Machel Montano, will serve as the Keynote Speaker for the upcoming 40th Annual Florida Caribbean Students Association Leadership Conference on Saturday, to take place April 4-6, 2014, at Miami Dade College, North Campus. In collaboration with Miami Dade College Tropical Beat CSA, the Florida Caribbean Students Association (FCSA), the Conference is organized under the theme “Empowering the Next Generation of Caribbean Leaders.”

The Conference will welcome over 700 college students of Caribbean descent from around the State of Florida and around the United States to participate in leadership and professional development workshops geared toward the enhancement and empowerment of the next generation of Caribbean student leaders.

For over thirty years, Machel Montano and his Team HD (formerly XTATIK) has been an internationally recognized band from Trinidad & Tobago in the music forms of soca, calypso, and other Caribbean and popular music genres. Machel Montano & Team HD has been the recipient of numerous songwriter and performing artist national and international awards.  In 2008, Machel Montano was awarded the Bob Marley Award for Entertainer of the Year 2007, Best Calypso/Soca Entertainer 2007, and named the Most Outstanding Stage Personality at the International Reggae and World Music Awards at the historic Apollo Theatre in New York. That year also found Machel receiving an award at the 1st Annual BET J Virtual Awards for Best Caribbean Artiste of the Year.    In May 2011, at the 30th Anniversary of IRAWMA, held in Port of Spain, Machel secured six (6) awards: Most Outstanding Stage Personality, Best Male Calypso/Soca Entertainer, Best Caribbean Entertainer, Most Outstanding Show Band, Best Soca Band and The King of Soca Award. In November of 2011, Machel was nominated by the Soul Train Awards for Best Caribbean Performance.

Machel Montano is a six-time Road March national awardee in 1997, 2006, 2007, 2011, 2012, and recently in 2014 Trinidad Carnival and was also crowned as the Power International Soca Monarch in 2014.  In addition, Mr. Montano has been recognized for his contributions as an artiste and entrepreneur, as a Caribbean Outlier by The University of the West Indies’ Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business.

Read more at Repeating Islands