WHO WERE the Caribbean’s newsmakers this year? Who were the people within the Caribbean doing interesting things, or the people from the Caribbean doing great work around the world? Who were the people in the Caribbean conversation? Our Most Interesting list for 2014 takes a look across the region for the artists, the influencers, the newsmakers, the characters. These are our picks for the Caribbean’s most interesting people of 2014, in no particular order.

Gaston Browne

After a sweeping election victory in June, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne hit the ground running. Seemingly every week, his government signed a major new investment deal. Later, he brought in Robert De Niro to build a hotel. Then his government began talking about making Antigua the region’s economic powerhouse, a Singapore on the Caribbean Sea. Whether he can pull it off or not remains to be seen; but Browne has been calling for bold ideas and big projects in a manner not seen in the region in recent years — and that makes him eminently interesting.