Biography
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Described as possessing a "unique sense of wisdom" and "a great deal of insight", Warren Cassell Jr. is one of the Caribbean region’s most prominent, respected and influential figures in the world of business.
Throughout his combined ten year career as an entrepreneur, writer and journalist, Warren has earnestly tried to maximize his potential while inspiring others to also live a life well lived. As he once remarked, ‘‘A leader is not someone who simply has a title or holds a position of power, but rather someone who through their own actions motivates others to live a more meaningful life.’’ Warren has always been captivated by the world of entrepreneurialism. With a small capital investment from his mother and father, he started his first venture at the age of eight: a greeting card business. He used his seed money to purchase graphic design software, paper, and other printing equipment. At the time, there was an untapped market for personalized greeting cards on Montserrat, the island where Warren lived, as people were limited to purchasing generic ready-made, and oftentimes brown stained cards, from a handful of stores. Explaining the rationale behind his first business Warren has been quoted as saying, “There definitely was not a lot to work with, especially for shoppers who were operating on short notice.” Orders began to come in not too long after Warren began taking out radio advertisements and plastering walls in the community with promotional flyers. The market for cards had waned a few years after as people now had their own computers and printers. This led Warren to start other business ventures including providing web design services to different organizations in the community. Warren’s web design company was responsible for the development of the website for the local Roman Catholic Parish and the island's former First lady, Joan Delsol Meade. His company also facilitated the island’s first ever online live streams for political rallies for the People’s Democratic Party (PDM), the current ruling government in Montserrat. To date Warren has had the privilege of working with clients from five continents — Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. As one critic put it, ‘‘Warren made a solid debut as a writer’’ when he published The Farm of Wisdom: 25 Unforgettable Tales that Will Ignite a Wiser You in 2013. The book was a collection of parables that were all set on a farm that each shared a pearl of wisdom. The following year Warren released his second book, Swim or Drown: Business and Life Lessons I’ve Learned from the Ocean. In this book, Warren invites his readers to take a dive into the ocean to learn a number of business and life lessons that can be gleaned by observing life under the earth’s surface. Both of Warren’s publications hit the Amazon Bestsellers Lists for their respective categories, and he has pledged to plant a tree in a developing nation for every copy of his books that are sold. In April 2014, Warren caught international attention following the publication of his article entitled I'm Not Your Average 14-Year-Old -- And I'm OK With That on The Huffington Post before becoming the youngest regular contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine. Later that year, Warren began producing an interview series for teenagers and millennials called Teen Tycoon. The objective of the program is to provide young people with access to the insights of successful entrepreneurs, entertainers and other accomplished persons. Warren has had the honor and privilege of interviewing world renowned economist Peter Schiff and Charles G. Koch, who at the time was the world’s sixth richest man with a personal net worth in excess of $42 billion. Other well-known guests on Warren’s show included; Sebastián Marroquín, the only son of the Colombian druglord Pablo Escobar, Nely Galan who was at one time the President of Telemundo as well as a former contestant on Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice, Grammy Award winning latin artist Natalia Jimenez, Bob Burg who is the author of the national bestselling book The Go-Giver, world renowned speaker Simon Sinek and Nate Holzapfel, a multimillionaire entrepreneur who successfully received an investment on ABC's Shark Tank. Since then Warren has had his work and story featured by CNN, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, Kapitall Wire, EliteDaily, Grant Cardone TV, Jamaica Observer, the Caribbean Examinations Council, and Fusion, a media property owned by Univision, the leading Spanish language television network in the U.S. He has also been asked to deliver presentations on topics relating to business and investing for organizations such as the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, the University of the West Indies’ Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business, and the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM). |
During his teens, Warren learned about the magic of compound interest and began investing in the stock market as a “buy and hold” investor. He primarily allocated his investments in companies that operated in the financial services, asset management and multifamily real estate industry. Among his portfolio is a minority stake in The Bank of Montserrat Limited, a non-publicly traded commercial bank that controls 80% of the commercial banking market on Montserrat. The Abella Group LLC was later formed in mid-2014 as a personal holding company to control his various business interest and investments going forward.
A master at the art of effective time management, Warren was able to maintain high grades in both primary and secondary school while running his business. In fact, Warren graduated, along with Isis Harvey, the valedictorian of the Montserrat Secondary School’s Graduating Class of 2015. He was 16 years old at the time. Following the completion of high school, Warren signed a contract with Investopedia.com, a subsidiary of Ask.com and the single largest website on the Web for financial education, becoming the company's youngest paid contributor. Since joining their team of writers Warren has written a number of hit articles including: “How El Chapo Became a Billionaire Druglord”, “How the Rothschild Family Created Their Wealth”, “How Grant Cardone Built a $350M Real Estate Empire” and “Robo-Advisors Are A Better Alternative to Professionally Managed Funds”. Over the years Warren’s efforts to promote entrepreneurship have received many accolades both on a domestic and international level. He has, on many occasions, been publicly praised by Reuben Meade, the former Premier of Montserrat, who once said that Warren "epitomize[s] the new Montserrat''. In 2010, Warren was awarded the Carlton “Funky Man” Allen Award, one of Montserrat’s most prestigious awards, for his academic achievements and explementary behavior while attending the St. Augustine Roman Catholic Primary School. In a local radio interview with Ann Marie-Dewar, Warren’s former primary school principal, she said “I'm not at all surprised that Warren has achieved what he has managed to achieve so far in his young life because he, from an early age, demonstrated such a keen interest in learning and he had also demonstrated a great sense of responsibility.” Warren was also recognized as a “Youth on the Rise” by Montserrat’s Department of Youth Affairs. In 2013, the Caribbean Journal named him the Caribbean's Entrepreneur of the Year. Most recently, Irwin LaRoque, the Secretary General of CARICOM, acknowledged Warren’s accomplishments in the summer of 2015 while giving the keynote address at the Caribbean Heads of Government Conference. In May 2018, Cassell was nominated to serve on the board of directors of The Bank of Montserrat Limited. At the bank's annual general meeting, shareholders who owned 2.07% of the total outstanding stock of the Bank of Montserrat Limited voted to elect Cassell Jr. to the company’s board of directors at the 24th annual general meeting (AGM) of shareholders held on May 30, 2018. This figure represents shareholders whose shares had a combined market value of EC$657,618 (US$243,562). He fell short of winning a board seat from one of the three incumbent directors who were up for reelection. In June 2018, Cassell commenced a 7-week internship program with Banco de Ahorro y Crédito ADOPEM, one of the leading microfinance institutions in the Dominican Republic. Warren is currently a junior at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. where he has been pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Accountancy and a minor in Spanish and Latin American Languages, Literatures & Cultures. |
Last Updated: September 14, 2018