Joseph T. Quinones (Obakanla) is the founder and board chairman of The Orisa Community Development Corporation he was born in Harlem, New York, is a military veteran and a graduate Temple University School of Business and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business’s MBA program in 2003. He is also the CEO of the Obara Realty Group (www.ObaraRG.com), a real estate investment management, and development firm operating based in Philadelphia, and also Atlanta, Nigeria, Ghana, and Atlanta.
His mother, Marjorie Quinones (Sango Gunmi), was the first African-American to be initiated as a priest of the Yoruba religion in America in 1963. Everyone in Baba Joe’s family is Olorisa, with his brother David (ibaye) having been initiated as Obatala in 1966, and his sisters, national best-selling author Karen E. Quinones and Kathleen (Kitty), who are biologically and spiritually Ibeji, having been initiated as Yemonja and Osun in 1970. Karen and Kathleen are the first biological Ibeji initiated in the USA. As a consequence of his elder sisters and brother being initially baptized Catholic, Baba Joe was the first African-American born into the Traditional Yoruba religious faith.
Baba Joe was initiated by Babalorisa Lloyd Weaver (ibae) to Aganju on May 26, 1979. His mother is the progenitor of Ile Ase, which was founded by Lloyd (ibae) and Stephanie Weaver and with over 250 priests initiated is the largest, most active, and respected African-American Orisa Ile (house) in the country. Some of Sango Gunmi’s most noteworthy godchildren and protégées include Lloyd (ibaye) and Stephanie Weaver, and she was an adjubona and Orisa grandmother to esteemed elder, Oseye Mchawi, who, along with Iya Stephanie Weaver, is one of the two spiritual matriarchs of Ile Ase.”
Baba Joe’s grounding in the Yoruba tradition is compounded by the fact that he is of Yoruba ancestry. 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 in which the interviewee details his great, great grand father’s (who is a subject of various tales in Baba 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 about the ethnic group (Yoruba) and town (Ilesha) in Nigeria his father was from. Interestingly, because he is a fourth-generation Yoruba, Ancestry DNA has matched Baba Joe with present-day ethnic Yoruba, to whom he is a distant cousin!
It is his family lineage that inspired Baba Joe to resign from AT&T in 2000 and live in Nigeria for 1.5 years, where he pursued graduate studies in Yoruba history and religion at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile Ife. With his godfather, Lloyd Weaver (ibae), as his witness, in April 2001, Baba Joe went to his family’s village Ilesa, where a Babalawo, who, of course, knew nothing of Baba Joe, confirmed through Ifa that he came from a long line of Sango worshippers.”
Moreover, the Babalawo said Baba Joe needed to receive a very unique Egun gun ceremony, in which, because Sango was as much Baba Joe’s family Egun (ancestral spirit) 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 phenomenon of this revelation was the fact that five years earlier, Baba Joe had a spiritual experience that led him to have a Lucumi Egun stick carved, which, contrary to Lucumi tradition, had a figurine of Sango on top of it.”
The centuries-old line of Orisa worshippers that descends from Baba Joe’s lineage continues, as Baba Joe is a single parent to his son Akinseye, born in 2006, and his daughter Anike, born in 2008.
As a child, Baba Joe’s family was quite poor, but even at the age of ten, he was quite industrious. He commuted from the South Bronx, where they 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, to support both his family and his love for Marvel comic books and movies. Baba Joe’s family moved to Harlem in 1974.”
In 1980, he joined the US Navy, from which he was honorably discharged in 1989 as a non-commissioned officer. Baba Joe went on to receive bachelor’s degrees in both accounting and international business in 1993 from Temple University in Philadelphia, graduating magna cum laude in the top 6% of his class. In his sophomore year at Temple, Baba Joe founded Afrocentricity United, a campus-based group that attracted both students and members of the community. It was through his experience with Afrocentricity United that he discovered what would become his two passions in life – business and the upliftment of people of African descent.”
Upon graduation, Baba Joe started an illustrious career as a top corporate sales account executive for AT&T, eventually ranking in the top 2% of the corporation globally. He was also an organizer within AT&T and, in 1993, founded the Philadelphia chapter of the AT&T Alliance of Black Telecommunications Employees. It was with the Alliance that Baba Joe became involved with digital divide issues and worked to address 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.”
Baba Joe is also active as an organizer in Yoruba land and, while a post-graduate student at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile Ife, coordinated the bringing of 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 over the years has brought hundreds of pounds of clothes and medical supplies to Yoruba land for the poor. Out of respect for his activism in Yoruba land, he was enstooled as a chief of the Obatala Shrine and awarded the title Chief Orisagbemi of Ile Ife.”
In 1996, he started CityLife Property Development and Management, a real estate acquisition, development, and management company which had over 1.5 million dollars of assets under management before it dissolved upon Baba Joe’s departure for Lagos and Primrose Development Company.”
In 1999, Baba Joe made a formal presentation to his Orisa house, then the House of Olosunmi and Oke Sade, proposing that they develop a formal organizational structure with elected organizational leadership to support and complement the spiritual leadership. This ultimately resulted in Baba Joe leading the transformation of his Orisa house into the Ile Ase Orisa Community, of which Baba Joe served as its first executive director of its organizational aspect.
After his tenure as ED of Ile Ase, in 2006, Baba Joe founded the Orisa CDC with the goal of expanding into the larger Orisa Community, envisioning a more unified and empowered community of Orisa worshippers than he first expressed by organizing his own Orisa House into the Ile Ase Orisa community.”
In October 2008, Baba Joe assumed the position of Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of Primrose Development Company in Lagos, Nigeria. Primrose is the real estate development platform for First City Monument Bank (FCMB) https://www.fcmb.com/ and is one of the premier developers of upscale residential units in Lagos.
In 2012, Baba Joe relocated back to Philadelphia to be present in the lives of his pre-school children, Akinseye and Anike, whom he has been the custodial parent of since 2018.
In 2014, in addition to his ownership of the Obara Realty Group, he became a partner in Estate Links, https://estatelinks.net/ which is a Lagos Nigeria based firm for which Joe runs its US office support their clients who live in Nigeria but wish to invest in US real estate, which they do via the Obara Realty Group.
Baba Joe’s thesis is that talented Orisa worshippers can be the modern-day warriors of their community and use their skill sets to develop economic and political assets for their community, which can be used to improve their social conditions and empowerment as a group. Baba Joe aspires to use his skills as a businessman, real estate entrepreneur, and community organizer to unify, institutionalize, and empower the Orisa Community nationally and ultimately globally.”
