Listen Live
Fantastic Voyage Generic Graphics Updated Nov 2023

While Jazz in the Gardens and other music festivals are magnets for merriment, the annual Black Enterprise Women of Power Summit at the Waldorf Astoria in Orlando is all about business. The three-day event attracts up to 700 female business executives and entrepreneurs in big groups from “Atlanta, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, D.C,. California — really all over,” said Alyssa Fant, events program director for Black Enterprise.

“The event was created for executive women of color. It was created so that companies would really have to invest in those women,” Fant said. The conference offers sessions in professional development, such as how to negotiate salaries, and lifestyle development, including golf and tennis clinics and spa treatments.

“The idea is that a happy life makes a happy worker,” Fant said. “You have to invest in their overall selves to get the best out of them.”

Florida’s diversity makes it a natural for many ethnic events, especially those that celebrate the state’s sizable Caribbean population.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the carnival season in Florida doesn’t end on Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. It heats up Memorial Day weekend with the Orlando Carnival, followed by celebrations of calypso, soca and everything Caribbean in Tampa (June), Jacksonville (September) and the granddaddy of Sunshine State carnivals in Miami-Fort Lauderdale (Columbus Day weekend in October).

Among the Caribbean-flavored events is the Miami/Bahamas Goombay Festival, a June celebration of the presence of Bahamian immigrants in South Florida.

Florida’s ethnic diversity is also evident at the dining table. In September, foodies can head west to Pensacola for the annual Seafood Festival. The City of Five Flags isn’t called the Red Snapper capital of the world without good reason. The culinary celebration is just one of the cultural and musical reasons to visit the city of white sand beaches throughout the year.

For food tourists who prefer spicier fare, the Grace Jamaica Jerk Festival is mandatory. Held in Sunrise, the “largest Caribbean food festival in the United States” attracts about 16, 000 people, including professional chefs, home cooks and food and music lovers.

Strategically scheduled in November, the festival attracts large numbers of people from New York and people from the islands, especially the Bahamas and Jamaica, according to Eddy Edwards, chairman of the board and founder of the event.

“Folks in New York come down for the weather, and folks from the islands come here to enjoy some of their culture and get some shopping done,” Edwards said. “It’s never a bad time to shop.”

(Photo: Frankie Beverly & Maze entertain a standing-room-only crowd at the 2014 Zora! Festival honoring author Zora Neal Hurston in Eatonville, Fla.Willie J. Allen, Jr., for VISIT FLORIDA)

« Previous page 1 2