Dannyele Teneel Leslie is preparing to represent Barbados at Miss Afrikana International 2027 in Ghana, a journey she says carries a meaning far beyond competing for a crown. The Alexandra School alumna, who holds a master’s degree in international trade policy, has built a life spanning diplomacy, music, fashion and pageantry, while navigating personal challenges, including a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 2017. She spoke to Associate Editor Natanga Smith as she prepares to reconnect with her African heritage on an international stage.
Q: You grew up in Speightstown, St Peter. What was childhood like and did you always imagine you would pursue so many different interests?
Leslie: I had a very pleasant and adventurous childhood in what was then a much quieter, but incredibly historic Speightstown. Some of my fondest memories are of fishing from a jetty with my father and roasting flying fish on the beach. I also spent a lot of time with my grandmother in St James, so the West Coast and the sea have always been part of my life. Ironically, after all that time around the sea, I still cannot swim, but I can certainly fish!
Church was another very important part of my childhood. I grew up attending Speightstown Church of the Nazarene every Sunday. One of my earliest memories is of the three of us going to church on my father’s motorcycle, my father riding, me in the middle and my mother on the back.
Church was also where singing first entered my life. Like so many singers, I started by singing and reciting in church as a very young child.
I was academically strong, but I was equally interested in drama, Brownies, public speaking and even track and field. If there was an opportunity to participate, I generally wanted to be part of it. It never occurred to me that I had to choose between being academic and being creative.
Q: Who were the people who helped shape the woman you have become?
Leslie: My mother would certainly be one of the greatest influences. She is a social worker by profession, but she is also an incredibly creative woman and a florist by trade. I grew up watching her work her day job while still finding room for all these other abilities.
I think I absorbed that without even realising it. She showed me very early that different parts of a person can coexist. You don’t necessarily have to sacrifice your creativity for your profession, or one ambition in order to pursue another.
Mr Jeff Broomes was another important influence during my Alexandra years. He recognised ability in his students and pushed us to develop it. He celebrated students who were doing well rather than allowing their talents to go unnoticed.
Q: You have pursued international trade policy, modelling, music, entrepreneurship and pageantry. Why have you never limited yourself to one path?
Leslie: I have never felt obligated to diminish one part of myself in order to satisfy another. I think I always knew that I was good at many things, and I never understood why that meant I had to choose only one.
For a very long time, one of my personal philosophies has been: “Opportunity knocks but once, whether it comes with its value stamped on it, or whether it comes in disguise.” So when an opportunity presents itself, my instinct has generally been to explore it. I would rather discover what I am capable of than spend my life wondering what might have happened if I had tried.
Even now, I don’t particularly like being still. I am happiest when I am creating something, learning something, working towards something or simply getting things done.
So whether it has been international trade policy, modelling, music, entrepreneurship or pageantry, I don’t see those things as competing identities. They are different expressions of the same person.
Q: You have experienced several pageant runner-up finishes. Did those disappointments ever make you consider giving up?
Leslie: I competed in Miss Barbados World in 2006, where I placed first runner-up and won Best Talent, before I won Miss Holetown in 2009. After Miss Holetown, I went on to represent Barbados regionally
and internationally, including at Miss JCI’s Caribbean Queen in Antigua, where I placed first runnerup; Miss Caribbean World in Tortola, where I was also first runner-up and received Best Question And Answer and Miss Intellect; and Miss Jamzone International in Guyana, where I again placed first runner-up after what I felt was a very strong showing.
At one point, my friends and I used to laugh that I was going to write a book called First Runner-Up (laughs).
But I don’t look back on those placements with disappointment. Pageantry taught me something much more important: never allow someone else’s interpretation of you to determine where you go next.
In a competition, you prepare as thoroughly as you can, you walk onto that stage and you give the absolute best of yourself. After that, the result is no longer entirely within your control. Judges have a job to do, and their decision is final. However, the judges’ decision may be final; your destination is not.
And after all those first runner-up finishes, am I hoping to win this one? Absolutely (laughs).
Q: You founded the fashion brand Carib Reign and have pursued music. Which creative projects remain closest to your heart?
Leslie: I love many things, and I have never felt that I needed to focus on one creative pursuit at the expense of another. For me, it is often about what opportunity presents itself and what feels aligned with me at that particular stage of my life.
With Carib Reign, navigating entrepreneurship has certainly taught me a lot. I would never pretend that building a business is all cake and rainbows. It can be incredibly challenging. But there have also been moments that reminded me why I started creating in the first place.
I had the opportunity to partner with the National Cultural Foundation on Bloom Barbados, where I was one of the featured designers and contributed some of my designs to the project. I also participated in my first fashion show and was able to watch pieces that had existed initially in my imagination come alive on models and onstage.
Music is different because it has been with me for such a long time. I don’t sing nearly as much as I probably should anymore, but I have never closed that door.
I don’t need every talent I possess to become a career. Some things can simply remain part of who I am until the right opportunity calls them forward again.
Q: You were diagnosed witmultiple sclerosis (MS) in 2017. How did that diagnosis change your outlook on life?
Leslie: The diagnosis actually came several years after my first experience with optic neuritis, which caused me to lose the vision in my right eye. I was treated with steroids in hospital and my vision eventually returned so life continued.
Years later, while completing my master’s degree [international trade policy], it happened again. I was doing an intensive one-year programme, preparing for examinations and trying, as I always do, to give my absolute best. It was an incredibly stressful period, and then I experienced what became my first major MS episode. That eventually led to my diagnosis.
I had to defer my examinations, which was difficult for someone accustomed to pushing through and getting things done.
On the surface, most people would probably never know that I live with MS. But I don’t say that because I believe illness should be hidden. Quite the opposite. I have simply never wanted a diagnosis to become my identity.
MS is something I live with. It has changed aspects of my life and it has certainly tested me, but it does not get to tell me who I am.
Perhaps that has been the greatest lesson: strength isn’t always pretending that nothing affects you. Sometimes strength is accepting what is, adapting where you must, and still refusing to surrender the fullness of your life.
Q: Your selection for Miss Afrikana International 2027 brings you to Ghana, which has a historical and cultural connection to Barbados. What does reconnecting with Africa mean to you?
Leslie: My interest in identity actually began long before Miss Afrikana. Even something as seemingly simple as my relationship with my hair has been part of that journey. Like many black girls of my generation, my hair was relaxed from the time I was about six or seven years old. I essentially knew my hair as straightened hair for most of my life.
That changed when I was about 30 and living in Belize, where I was completing an internship with the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre. I couldn’t find anyone to maintain my relaxed hair and by the time I returned to Barbados, my hair was not in particularly good condition.
So I made what felt at the time like this incredibly brave decision: I cut it off and started again.
That curiosity eventually led me to explore my ancestry as well. My most recent ancestry update estimates that I am approximately 95 per cent African, with Ghana and Western Togo accounting for 22 per cent, my largest single regional connection.
And the timing was almost poetic. The update arrived in the same week that I received confirmation that I had been selected to represent Barbados at Miss Afrikana International.
Barbados was profoundly shaped by African people, by their memory, their survival, their traditions and everything they created under circumstances they did not choose.
The Atlantic separated geography, but it did not erase identity.
Our ancestors crossed that Atlantic in one direction without freedom, without choice and without control over the lives awaiting them. Generations later, I have the extraordinary privilege of crossing it in the opposite direction as a free woman.
Q: Beyond competing for the crown, what do you hope to achieve through Miss Afrikana and what legacy would you like to leave for young Barbadian women?
Leslie: I want my life to outlive the time I am given. I understand that our time here is measured, but I think legacy is what allows a person’s impact to extend beyond it. For me, fulfilment would not simply be being able to look back at everything I accomplished personally. It would be knowing that somewhere along the way, I created opportunities that continued after me.
As it relates specifically to Miss Afrikana, yes, the immediate goal is very clear: I am going to Ghana to win the crown. I don’t think there is anything wrong with saying that. I am preparing seriously because I want to represent Barbados exceptionally well and I want to win.
But I also want this journey to become bigger than my own participation.
Ultimately, I would love to establish a Miss Afrikana Barbados franchise so that another Barbadian woman can have this experience after me, learning her history, understanding the connections between Barbados, Ghana and the wider African continent, developing her talents, and having an international platform through which she can show the world something of what Barbados is made of.
I would like another young woman to have access to those possibilities, and then create possibilities of her own.
I don’t simply want to collect opportunities. I want to leave some behind for somebody else.
If another young Barbadian woman can eventually stand on an international stage because a door I walked through remained open behind me, that would feel like legacy.
Q: Finally, when life does not go according to plan, what keeps you moving forward?
Leslie: Like most people, I have had doors closed in my face. Sometimes that has been quite literal in the modelling and pageant spaces. I have always been very petite, so I’ve heard, “You’re too small”, or, “You’re not tall enough”. Professionally, I’ve received my share of those emails that begin, “We regret to inform you . . . .”
And I won’t pretend those moments don’t hurt. They do. When you have prepared, believed you were capable and genuinely wanted something, disappointment can be incredibly deflating.
But I’ve learned not to live there. Sometimes you go back to the drawing board. Sometimes you lean on the people you trust. You pray. You apply yourself again. And sometimes, after knocking repeatedly on the door you were convinced was meant for you, you have to be willing to turn around and notice that there are other doors.
I have never allowed my disappointments to trap me in a box of disappointment.
I may be disappointed. I may need a moment to regroup. But eventually, I crawl out, reassess and look for the next thing that can bring me purpose, joy, success or fulfilment. (NS)