Joe Quinones

Joseph T. Quinones (Obakanla) was born November 9, 1962 in Harlem, New York.  He is a MBA graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and the founder and CEO of CityLife Property Development and Management and the founder and co-chair of The Coalition, which is a political activist group in Philadelphia.  His mother, Marjorie Quinones (Sango Gunmi), was the first African-American to be initiated as a priest of the Yoruba religion in America.  Everyone in Joe’s family is Olorisa with his David brother having been initiated as an Obatala priest in 1966 and his sisters Karen E. Quinones Miller (national best selling author) and Kathleen (Kitty), who are biologically and spiritually Ibeji, having been initiated in 1970 as priestess of Yemonja and Osun. As a consequence of his elder sisters and brother being initially baptized Catholic, Joe was the first African-American born into the Traditional Yoruba religious faith.
 Joe was initiated Aganju on May 26, 1979.  He was born during the emergence of African-Americans into The Yoruba religious tradition and his mother became renowned as the founder of one of the largest, most active, and respected African-American Orisa lines in the country.  Some of her most noteworthy godchildren and protégées include Lloyd and Stephanie Weaver.

In spite of the above, Joe’s family was quite poor but even at the age of ten he was quite industrious so, he commuted from the South Bronx, where we lived at the time, to Harlem to sell bootlegged 8 track tapes, jewelry, and other such items at an open air stand in front of the Apollo Theater. 

In 1980, he joined the US Navy from which he was honorably discharged from in 1989 as a non-commissioned officer.  Joe went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in both accounting and international business in 1993 from Temple University in Philadelphia.  He graduated magna cum laude in the top 8% of his class.  In his sophomore year, Joe founded Afrocentricity United, which was a campus-based group that attracted both students and members of the community. It was through his experience with Afrocentricity United that Joe discovered what would become his two passions in life - business and the upliftment of people of African descent, especially Yoruba.  

Upon graduation, Joe started an illustrious career as a top corporate sales account executive for AT&T where he was eventually ranked in the top 2% of the corporation globally. Joe was also an organizer within AT&T and in 1993 founded the Philadelphia chapter of the AT&T Alliance of Black Telecommunications Employees.  It with the Alliance Joe became involved with digital divide issues and did work addressing computer literacy.  He accomplished this by opening a computer literacy lab called the AT&T Learning Network Academy and also ran a computer contest throughout all of the Philadelphia high schools which awarded the winners computers.

In 1993, he also formed Three Brothers Enterprises Cultural Travels and Tours, which planned, marketed, and took people on African culture themed trips. Three Brothers Enterprises’ mission was to bring people of African descent together through culture and entertainment. 

Joe developed his love for travel in The Navy and has traveled extensively internationally and has visited the Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast, Senegal, United Kingdom, France, Korea, Brazil, Philippines, and more. 

Joe is also the founder and Managing Partner of CityLife Property Development and Management,, which is a real estate investment, development, property management and consulting company that manages over 100 units in Philadelphia and New York City. Joe's development projects include a mixed retail and residential property near Temple University.  In 2006, CityLife raised a $751,000 dollar real estate investment fund which subsequently invested in real estate projects with over $6 million.  You can find out more about CityLife at www.clpdm.com.
Joe’s grounding in the Yoruba tradition is compounded by the fact that he is of Yoruba linage. Proof of his Yoruba ancestry is contained in the book "Guinea's other Suns: The African Dynamic in Trinidad Culture" which contains an interview with his ancestor within which the interviewee detailed his father's (whom is a subject of various tales in Joe’s mother’s family) arrival in Trinidad as a free merchant seaman and Sango priest in the early 1800s.  He goes on in the interview to talk of the ethnic group (Yoruba) and town (Ilesa) in Nigeria his father was from.

It is his family linage that inspired Joe to resign from AT&T in 2000 and live in Nigeria for 1.5 years where he did graduate studies in Yoruba history and religion at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile Ife.   With his godfather Lloyd Weaver as his witness, in April 2001, Joe went to his family’s village where a Babalawo, who of course knew nothing of Joe, through Ifa confirmed that he came from a long line of Sango worshippers.

Moreover, the Babalawo said Joe needed to receive a very unique Egun gun ceremony where because Sango was as much Joe’s family Egun as he was his family’s patron Orisa, his Egungun, unlike others that consisted of an Egun gun mask, would instead have a figurine of Sango sitting on top of it.  Adding to the phenomena of this revelation was the fact that five years earlier Joe had a spiritual experience which lead him to have an Egungun stick carved that contrary to Lukumi tradition had a figurine of Sango on top of it.

Joe is also active as an organizer in Yoruba land and while living in Ile Ife coordinated bringing a group of American teenagers to perform for the Ooni of Ife and the Ataoja of Osogbo.  In response to an explosion in Lagos that killed thousands of Yoruba, he raised money for disaster relief and has bought hundreds of pounds of clothes to Yoruba land for the poor.  Out of respect for his activism in Yoruba land, he was awarded the title Chief Orisagbemi of Ile Ife by the elders of the Obatala Shrine there.

Most recently, In Philadelphia, Joe formed the Coalition which seeks to reassert the needs of the community in the political process and to form progressive community centered business and community network.

Joe's thesis is that talented African-American professionals can be the modern day warriors of their community and use their skill sets to develop economic and political assets for their group that can be used to improve their social conditions and empowerment as an ethnic group. Joe aspires to use his skills as a developer and real estate entrepreneur to rebuild and revitalize distressed and emerging neighborhoods in Urban America.

Joe can be reached at jtquinones@clpdm.com,  and www.clpdm.com