Meeting Meryanne Loum-Martin and the Power of Gathering Across the Diaspora
- Chelsea
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Sitting with Meryanne Loum-Martin in Marrakech was one of those moments that stays with you.
Meryanne is a cultural entrepreneur and creative leader whose influence spans hospitality, design, and global convening. She is the founder and creative force behind Jnane Tamsna, a world-renowned boutique hotel celebrated for its integration of culture, art, and intentional hospitality, and she is also the only Black female hotelier in Morocco. Her path from Paris-trained lawyer to self-taught designer and published author (Inside Marrakesh) has positioned her as a steward of culture and space in ways that are both deeply personal and globally resonant.
Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Vogue, Forbes, and Condé Nast Traveler, not simply because of where she builds, but because of how she builds and what she centers: story, identity, and belonging across the African diaspora.
What stood out most in our time together was not only what she has built, but how she thinks about space, story, and community. We spoke about identity, authorship, and what it means to create environments where people across the African diaspora can gather, reflect, and be in relationship with one another in ways that are intentional and generative.
We found ourselves moving easily between story, culture, and strategy, tracing how what’s unfolding in the U.S. echoes across the African diaspora and how global and local narratives are constantly in conversation with one another. What stayed with me most was our shared attention to the spaces where people gather across borders, not just as physical places, but as narrative environments that shape belonging. We talked about how those spaces influence whose voices rise, whose histories are held with care, and how collective identity is formed, protected, and sometimes contested.
Meryanne shared her vision for the Diaspora Salon not as an event to be consumed, but as a convening to be experienced. A gathering place for thinkers, creatives, leaders, and cultural stewards from across the global African diaspora to sit together in dialogue, reflection, and exchange, where presence matters more than performance and relationship comes before representation.
The Diaspora Salon is being created as an intentional space where thinkers, creatives, leaders, and cultural stewards from across the global African diaspora can gather in dialogue, reflection, and connection. It is not about performance or extraction, but about presence and exchange. It is an invitation to slow down, to listen deeply, and to engage in conversations that help us better understand identity, creativity, belonging, and our shared future across borders.
As a global narrative strategist, I am always thinking about who creates the rooms where story is shaped, whose voices are centered, and how those spaces influence the narratives that travel. Spaces like the Diaspora Salon are narrative infrastructure, where memory, imagination, leadership, and future-building meet.
Sitting with Meryanne and having this exchange reminded me why story and leadership matter so much to me: story is not only told, it is hosted, protected, and convened, and leadership at its most powerful is about creating the conditions for voices, cultures, and communities to be in dignified, expansive, forward-looking conversation.
The Diaspora Salon
Marrakech, Morocco
February 8–11, 2026
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