Jétry Dumont explains why he left finance in the US to build AyiboPost in Haiti

AyiboPost co-founder and director Jétry Dumont looks back on his journey in a long interview with Naomie Labaty for the show ANDEDAN, posted on YouTube on October 31, 2026. For more than an hour and a half, he talks about his childhood in Port-au-Prince, his studies in the United States, his return to Haiti and the birth of one of the country's most-followed online media outlets.

From Pacot to New Jersey

Jétry Dumont grew up in Pacot, in Port-au-Prince. He is the son of journalist Patrice Dumont, long associated with the sports pages of the daily Le Matin. In the interview, he speaks openly about his attention disorder, which shaped his schooling, before he earned a science baccalaureate.

After moving to New Jersey, he first studied at Union County College, then at Kean University, where he earned a degree in finance. His first published piece dates back to 2008, in Le Matin. After his studies, he worked in tax and accounting in the United States.

A blog that became a newsroom

AyiboPost was launched on June 1, 2014, founded with Naïké Michel. It started as a participatory blog where Haitians at home and in the diaspora published their analyses, at first mostly in English, then mostly in French. Widlore Mérancourt, now editor-in-chief, joined very young.

Jétry Dumont says an ordinary day in New York, on his way back from a job interview, convinced him to go home. He returned to Haiti around 2014-2015 and also worked at start-ups, including Job509 and Pratique Haïti, and on the team that launched Loop Haiti, according to his profile published by SUNY Purchase.

Video, Ayibo Studio and Hurricane Matthew

In 2015, AyiboPost moved into video. Its first production was about the deportation crisis on the border with the Dominican Republic. To fund the editorial work, the team created Ayibo Studio, which produces content for organizations.

In late 2016, after Hurricane Matthew, Jétry Dumont and journalist Ralph Thomas went to cover the damage in the South. A partnership with the organization Internews followed. He says he set one condition: that the audiovisual equipment stay with AyiboPost when the project ended. With that equipment, and then a grant from FOKAL, the outlet built a real newsroom.

Three journalists to start

In 2017, the newsroom started with three journalists, led by Ralph Thomas. Jétry Dumont says he drew inspiration from outlets such as Vox, Vice and Mediapart. A training stay at a media company in Belgium showed him, he says, how much a professional structure matters.

He also describes how the outlet's ethics began: before publishing a sensitive piece, team members voted. He gives the example of a critical article about Michel Martelly, published after such a vote. The newsroom's culture took shape before it was written down, he says.

Brain drain, the first challenge

For Jétry Dumont, AyiboPost's biggest challenge today is losing talent to emigration, ahead of insecurity itself. He argues that media outlets must invest in training, saying Haiti lacks journalism schools suited to investigative work. Most recruits come from the social sciences, notably at the State University of Haiti, and learn the trade on the job.

As a manager, he says he gives younger staff a lot of room to propose new formats, such as TikTok. Asked about hope, he notes that Haiti is a young country, born of a revolution built from scratch and attacked on all sides. He says he stays because he feels at home there, down to the small details of daily life.