WOMEN IN BUSINESS • GUYANA • JUNE 2026
By LCN Newsroom | La Caribeña News
QUICK ANSWER Abbigale Loncke-Watson is the founder and president of the WeLead Association, a Guyanese non-profit established in 2017 to advance women’s leadership, entrepreneurship, and economic participation across Guyana and the wider Caribbean. |
GEORGETOWN, Guyana — When Abbigale Loncke-Watson returned from the Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative in 2017, she came back to a gap. There was no major organisation doing anything for women in business in Guyana. No structured mentorship. No regional network. No platform where a woman running a small enterprise in Essequibo could sit beside a policy-maker in Georgetown and have the same conversation. She decided to build one.
Nine years later, the WeLead Association has trained over 300 women across Guyana, hosted five regional conferences, and placed its founder on a stage at the Pegasus Suites alongside a two-time Grammy Award winner, a sitting minister, and the country’s Deputy Solicitor General. That trajectory did not happen by accident. It happened because Loncke-Watson has treated women’s economic participation not as a cause but as an infrastructure problem, and she has spent nearly a decade laying the pipes.
La Caribeña News covered the WeLead 2026 conference on 27 June 2026, where over 300 women gathered at the Pegasus Suites and Corporate Centre in Georgetown under the theme Guyana to the World: Women Building Global Bridges. That event was the clearest expression yet of what Loncke-Watson has been building since she came home.
From Essequibo to a regional network
Loncke-Watson’s roots are in rural Guyana. She grew up connected to the Essequibo region, where her grandparents and parents were born into farming communities. That background shapes how she thinks about economic development. When she talks about reaching women in the hinterland, it is not an aspiration. It is personal geography.
After returning from the YLAI programme, a United States government initiative launched under President Barack Obama, she founded WeLead Caribbean, operating publicly as the WeLead Association, as a non-profit. The founding instinct was simple: the mentorship and professional development that had changed her own trajectory should not be available only to people who had the luck to travel abroad. It should exist in Guyana, for Guyanese women, on Guyanese terms.
The organisation built courses in small-business management, marketing, digital literacy, and finance. It organised the Academy for Women Entrepreneurs. In rural areas, it adapted programmes to the realities women actually face: childcare responsibilities, flexible schedules, blended learning. In Essequibo, women in agro-processing learned to improve the presentation and labelling of their products. In Linden, honey producers regularised their brands and opened new markets. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when fairs were suspended, WeLead organised local markets and used live-stream selling to keep those businesses alive.
“If rural women thrive, Guyana thrives with them.” — Abbigale Loncke-Watson
By 2016, before WeLead even existed, the scale of her work had already drawn attention beyond Guyana. In a speech that year, former United States President Barack Obama recognised Loncke-Watson by name for her impact on the Guyanese business community, specifically for the employment she had created for single mothers and young women through her home care agency.
The institutional record
WeLead is only one dimension of Loncke-Watson’s footprint. She is the Chief Executive Officer of the Loncke Group, which encompasses MBW Energy Support Services, a firm that guides companies entering Guyana’s energy sector. She chairs the Board of Directors for Women in Energy Guyana. She is a senior member of the leadership of Highland Poe, a firm working across strategic communications, federal government affairs, and investor relations.
Her partnership with the United States Department of State to train women entrepreneurs across Guyana has extended WeLead’s reach beyond what a single non-profit could sustain alone. The organisation has also partnered with ExxonMobil, the Nico Consulting Group, and the United States Embassy in Georgetown, a combination that has kept the training pipeline funded and the network growing even as the scope of the work expanded.
That institutional credibility is reflected in where WeLead alumni and affiliates now sit. The OAS Inter-American Commission of Women’s May 2026 regional forum on women’s economic rights found Guyana already ahead of the agenda on multiple fronts: chamber presidencies held by women, ISO certification being delivered by women-led firms, maritime inclusion being pushed by a dedicated women’s chapter. Those outcomes did not emerge from the forum. They emerged from years of ground-level work by the network Loncke-Watson and others have been building.
The WeLead 2026 programme itself illustrated the point. Two of the afternoon panellists, Kathy Smith and Josephine Tapp-Rutherford, now hold two of the five seats on the Private Sector Commission’s Executive Management Committee, a shift La Caribeña News reported in May 2026 as the closest women’s business interests have ever sat to the centre of national economic decision-making. They arrived at that table having moved through exactly the kind of chamber and advocacy work that WeLead exists to support.
Bhabita Albert, whose unopposed re-election as president of the Region Three Chamber of Commerce and Industry in April 2026 made her the first woman to lead that chamber in two consecutive terms, represents the same current at the regional level. The pattern across these women is not coincidence. It is the result of an ecosystem that has been deliberately constructed.
Sispro and the oil blocks
Loncke-Watson’s ambitions have never been confined to advocacy. In Guyana’s inaugural offshore licensing round in 2023, she co-founded Sispro Inc., the only indigenous Guyanese company among the bidders and the only all-female-led consortium in the auction. Sispro, co-founded with Dr. Ayodele Dalgety-Dean, Dr. Melissa Varswyk, and Omadele George, was awarded two offshore concessions: Block S3, a shallow-water block, and Block D2, a deepwater block.
In June 2026, Sispro announced a partnership with Nigerian oil company Bono Energy, resolving the operator question that had kept the Petroleum Exploration License pending since the award. Bono Energy’s executive director confirmed committed funding of up to US$600 million across both assets, with initial investment expected to range between US$150 million and US$200 million. Loncke-Watson, serving as Company Secretary of Sispro, said at the Local Content Summit in Houston that the group is ready to move to contract with the Government of Guyana once the ongoing 3-D seismic survey data is finalised. A women-led indigenous company entering Guyana’s upstream sector at this scale has no precedent in the country’s history.
A women-led indigenous company entering Guyana’s upstream sector at this scale has no precedent in the country’s history.
WeLead 2026 and what it represents
The conference on 27 June drew its energy from Guyana’s particular moment. The country marked 60 years of independence on 26 May 2026 with oil production exceeding 900,000 barrels per day and GDP having grown from roughly US$5 billion in 2019 to approximately US$25 billion. The question WeLead has always asked is whether the women of Guyana will shape that growth or receive it passively, and WeLead 2026 was the most visible answer yet.
Melanie Fiona, whose keynote appearance marked her first visit to Guyana, described the trip as a passing of the baton. Born in Toronto to Guyanese parents, she won two Grammy Awards in 2012 and the 2026 JUNO Award for her EP Say Yes. Her framing of the visit aligned exactly with what Loncke-Watson has been building: a bridge between the Guyanese diaspora and the country’s present, carried across by women who refuse to wait for permission.
The presence of Women’s Haven® Guyana at the conference, represented by serial entrepreneur Lexann McPhoy, captured the same spirit at the MSME level. McPhoy runs a nail salon, a regional nail products distribution network through NSI Caricom, and an organic feminine care brand, all from 64 Hadfield Street in Georgetown. Her participation illustrated the WeLead argument in concrete terms: the women who belong in these rooms are already building, and the room exists to make them more visible, not to convince them to start.
“I don’t want any woman in Guyana to feel like she has missed the boat,” Loncke-Watson has said. At WeLead 2026, with 300 women in the room, a Grammy winner on stage, oil block negotiations underway, and two of Guyana’s five private-sector leadership seats held by women, that sentiment had moved some distance from aspiration toward fact.
What comes next
Loncke-Watson has stated publicly that her goal is to ensure no woman in Guyana feels she has missed the economic moment the country is living through. The practical infrastructure for that goal now includes a nine-year-old non-profit with regional reach, a network of corporate and government partnerships, a presence in the energy sector through Sispro, and a conference platform that has grown from a domestic gathering into an event that attracts international keynote speakers and Caribbean-wide attention.
The test that follows every conference is whether the connections made inside the room produce outcomes outside it. On the evidence of the last nine years, Loncke-Watson’s record suggests that when she says women will not miss the boat, she means it, and she is prepared to keep building the dock until they board.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Who is Abbigale Loncke-Watson?
Abbigale Loncke-Watson is the founder and president of the WeLead Association, the Chief Executive Officer of the Loncke Group, and a co-founder of Sispro Inc., the only indigenous Guyanese company to win oil blocks in Guyana’s inaugural offshore licensing round. She was recognised by former United States President Barack Obama in 2016 for her contributions to women’s employment in Guyana.
What is the WeLead Association and what has it achieved?
The WeLead Association is a Guyanese non-profit founded in 2017 to support women’s leadership, entrepreneurship, and professional development. It has trained over 300 women in partnership with ExxonMobil, the Nico Consulting Group, and the United States Embassy in Georgetown, hosted five regional conferences, and expanded its programmes to rural and hinterland communities across Guyana.
What is Sispro Inc. and what are its oil blocks?
Sispro Inc. is a women-led indigenous Guyanese energy company co-founded by Loncke-Watson, Dr. Ayodele Dalgety-Dean, Dr. Melissa Varswyk, and Omadele George. It won two offshore concessions in Guyana’s 2023 licensing round: Block S3 (shallow water) and Block D2 (deepwater). In June 2026, Sispro announced a partnership with Nigerian company Bono Energy, which has committed funding of up to US$600 million across both blocks.
What was the theme of WeLead 2026?
WeLead 2026 was held on 27 June 2026 at the Pegasus Suites and Corporate Centre in Georgetown under the theme Guyana to the World: Women Building Global Bridges. The conference drew over 300 women leaders, entrepreneurs, and policymakers from across Guyana and the Caribbean, with two-time Grammy Award winner Melanie Fiona as keynote speaker.
How does Loncke-Watson’s work connect to Guyana’s broader economic growth?
Guyana’s GDP has grown from approximately US$5 billion in 2019 to roughly US$25 billion by 2026, driven by oil production that now exceeds 900,000 barrels per day. Loncke-Watson’s work through WeLead, Sispro, and her energy advisory firm MBW Energy Support Services positions women not as beneficiaries of that growth but as participants in shaping it, from hinterland agro-processing to offshore exploration.
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