News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Jan. 18, 2019: A popular Caribbean-born entrepreneur, who passed away suddenly on Sunday night, Jan. 13, 2019, shocking her family, colleagues and the wider business community, will be laid to rest next week following a New Jersey funeral service.
Allison Butters-Grant, founder of Global Seafoods Distributors, Inc., will be funeralized on Jan. 23, 2019 at 7 p.m. at the St. Matthew A.M.E. Church, 336 Oakwood Avenue, Orange, New Jersey. A viewing is set for prior to the service, from 5-7 p.m.
Butters-Grant died after a battle with cancer. She was 52.
Her passing has stunned many in the Diaspora and in Guyana, where she was born and returned to expand her company. “Your death broke me up into unexplainable pieces courageous one,” said Selwyn Collins, author and talk show host. “Now, in your honor, I break my fast from this digital wilderness, for you, my sister. I’ll ensure they remember you, A.B.G. – A Better Guyana.”
“Mrs. Butters- Grant was greatly admired and respected as a female entrepreneur and trailblazer,” the Guyana President’s office said in a statement.
The Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association Limited (GMSA), on which Butters-Grant served as an Executive Board Member, said she “brought new ideas and perspectives to the GMSA. We will miss her. Guyana will miss her.”
The Guyana Ministry of Natural Resources lauded Butters-Grant for the role she played in the natural resources sector, calling her a miner in her own right and a source of inspiration within the MSG and wider natural resources sector.
Butters-Grant was born in Charlestown, Guyana and moved to the US in 1986. She earned a degree in business administration with a minor in accounting and database management in 1990 from Essex College of Business.
Being the daughter of successful seafood entrepreneurs, she opened a Seafood Market soon after, specializing in only wild caught seafood sourced from Guyana with the mantra “straight from the sea to your plate.”.
After selling her first business, she moved on to distribute wild caught seafood to supermarkets throughout the state of New York and New Jersey as “Butters & Grant Caribbean Seafood” and then returned to Guyana in 2015 where she opened Global Seafood Distributors with her husband, Kerwin. She was the only black female in Guyana to own and operate a fish-processing plant. Global Seafood Distributors is located at the West Ruimveldt Industrial Site, Guyana, where they process all local fish.
Butters-Grant is survived by her husband and daughter Tiffany Sobers as well as a grandson.
