The Daniel Fils-Aime Award
Krystel Kanzki
Krystel Armand Kanzki is a CPA, an author entrepreneur, a wife, and a mother of three children. She was born and raised in Haiti. Very early, she was identified as a Leader in her School and in her community. She gathered a team of students to create the very first Yearbook for her school at a time where digital technology was still at its infancy. As a teenager, she also took the initiative to get trained to teach illiterate adults how to read in creole.
She obtained her French Baccalaureat, with a specialty in Math, in Haiti with high honors. She then obtained her BS/BA in Accounting and Marketing, Magna Cum Laude, at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Krystel Armand Kanzki started her career as an auditor for KPMG in Washington DC, where she had the privilege of serving on prestigious account like the audit of Washintong DC Government, Amtrak, among other accounts. She left KPMG in 2011 as Manager to return to her home country Haiti where she joined her 40-year-old family business in the insurance and car rental businesses as the VP of Finance.
From 2017 to 2020, Krystel Armand Kanzki used her free time to teach entrepreneurs, professionals, and teenagers through her platform Xponential Learning. Her workshops included Accounting for Non-Accountants, Microsoft Excel Intermediate levels, Public Speaking, Entreneurship for Women, Leadership, among other topics. Her course attracted all the most prominent institutions in the country including Digicel, Sogebank, Unibank to name a few who sent their team to get trained at Xponential Learning. She also alwaoffered scholarships to students who could not afford to pay for the training.
In December 2018, Krystel Armand Kanzki launched in Haiti her book series for children, La Petite Pétra. The bilingual versions were launched in the United States for the first time in November 2019, where she was selected to be a featured author at the Miami International Book Fair. The books are available in Creole-English, French-English, and currently being lauched in Spanish-English and they have been received with much enthusiasm by children. Since the launch in 2018, the self-published author has sold over 7500 books and has attracted the interest of several schools, educators, foundations, and parents.
Today, she is leading the expansion of the family business into the US market and was appointed Chief Executive Officer to CAH-USA, INC, which will offer innovative healthcare products to the Haitian Community living in the United States and for their loved ones who they support financially in Haiti.