Jessica Byron, convener from the Caribbean, is a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis and a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kingston, Jamaica. Her undergraduate and initial postgraduate training was done at UWI, Cave Hill and St. Augustine campuses. She holds a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Before coming to lecture at UWI Mona in 1994, she lectured at the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands, and before that she worked as a diplomat for her own country and for the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States. She has also been a visiting lecturer at the Université des Antilles-Guyane in Guadeloupe and at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in San Andres, Colombia.

Her research interests include hemispheric and regional integration, European-Caribbean relations, small states and the multilateral system. She is a member of the Junta Ejecutiva of CRIES, a Steering Committee member of the Globalization Studies Network, a member of the Caribbean Studies Association, the Latin American Studies Association, and the International Studies Association. She serves on the International Advisory Committees and/or Editorial Committees of a number of international journals. She is currently a member of the UWI Board of Undergraduate Studies for 2006-8. She is also the Coordinator for the Graduate Programmes in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.

When asked why she joined the Building Global Democracy Programme and what her aspirations for the programme were, Jessica replied:

"I joined the BGD programme for a mix of reasons. I have had the experience before of working with multidisciplinary, multicultural groups and I have always found it to be very rewarding in terms of my personal learning and development. On the professional side, the vision of the BGD is original, innovative and very exciting. It brings together a large group of exciting researchers and activists from many corners of the globe. I hope to deepen my experience of working with such research groups, learn more about managing knowledge production and networking, and I hope to be able to engage more Caribbean/Latin American colleagues in this process."

"I hope that the BGD programme will accomplish first its immediate goals for 2009 – 2010 period, and that it will develop further thereafter. I believe that it has the capacity to add greatly to our understanding about the current state of and possibilities for democratic participation in global processes….also, how deeply rooted these are in local, national and regional processes. I hope that it will generate some excellent literature comprising a wide range of views on local and global democratic or undemocratic processes. I hope also that it will stage a number of seminars bringing together people from different regions and these will lead to ongoing collaborative networks among the participants. I hope finally that the BGD programme will explore ways to involve young people integrally in its processes since they are, above all, those who will have to take responsibility, learn as much as they can about global developments and participate fully in local and global decision-making. A contradiction of our day is that even though there is a proliferation of means of communication and global media, much of what is popularly available serves mostly to delude and to distort and large numbers of people remain ignorant and manipulated by a few and do not take responsibility for their own lives."