Dr Kris Rampersad is an independent cultural and literary sustainable development educator, and multimedia producer/publisher, journalist, facilitator, Lecturer, Trainer & Consultant.
She has a BA First Class Honours and PhD degrees from the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago; Diploma in Mass Communications from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, India; Commonwealth Professional Fellowship from the Association of Commonwealth Universities, UK; Nuffield Foundation Fellowship to Wolfson College, Cambridge University, the Foreign Press Centre of Japan, UWI Post Graduate Scholarship, along with numerous skills development training in management, leadership, diversity management, ICTs and new media, journalism, communications, fundraising, networking, gender equity, advocacy among others.
A multimedia print/tvproducer/publisher, media manager, journalist, writer, researcher and educator of almost three decades, she has helped develop and implement effective culture and multi-media, communications and outreach strategies, policies, and devised and conducted creative interactive courses, seminars and education programmes that encourage critical interrogation of development agendas to stimulate people-centred, gender and culture-sensitive paths to progress.
These utilise development perspectives and evaluations and assessments of north-south relations and particularly the small island developing states of the Caribbean in comparative glocal contexts, particularly in relation to gender, governance, culture, education, interreligious dialogue and understanding and Small Island States.
She has done extensive work across the connected Americas especially Caribbean and Latin American region in raising appreciation for cultural heritage, diversity and inclusion. All three Caribbean countries recently admitted to the UNESCO World Heritage lists benefitted from her work and she was also a pioneer of the Commonwealth Women Agents of Change initiative, leading the Caribbean agenda for change and educating women in political and other leadership spheres. She has also been actively involved in inspiring youth through literacy and literary appreciation across the Caribbean.
She is a UNESCO-trained facilitator for its Culture Conventions including World Heritage, Intangible Cultural Heritage, Diversity of Cultural Expressions, Intercultural Dialogue, Creative Cities, Slave, Silk and Indentured Immigrant Routes and has extensive work experiences in multistakeholder engagement and community empowerment in activating creative industries, heritage conservation and formulating programmes and mechanisms to access advance intercultural dialogue and social inclusion.
She has extensive experience of almost fifteen years in drafting, negotiating and presenting high level diplomatic texts and resolutions for equitable, peaceful and sustainable development through involvement in intergovernmental activities and consultations with agencies of the UN, Commonwealth, Organisation of American States, European Union and local to international level NGOs and CBOs
She has worked across the UN, OAS and Commonwealth and Caribbean communities in helping communities and other stakeholders access international instruments as the UNESCO Culture Conventions, in engaging civil society in inclusion, respect for diversity, rights, freedoms and governance processes through understanding how to use traditional and access conventional media as well as in advancing empowerment of rural and marginalized communities, youth and women and increasing their participation in political, social and economic processes.
She is the author of three books: Finding A Place; Through the Political Glass Ceiling and LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago and numerous articles and presentations on culture, media, gender, and community empowerment as driving forces for social, political and economic transformation.
She holds several awards for her contributions to journalism, and the arts and culture including as 2018 recipient of a National Medal, Gold for Journalism/Development of Women; Luminary Award 2015, (BWIA) Media Award for Excellence in Journalism, Pan American Health Organisation Award for Excellence in Journalism, and others from the Pointe-a-Pierre Wildfowl Trust, Moms for Literacy, the Global Organisation of Peoples of Indian Origin, the New Delhi Indian Institute of Mass Communication, the University of the West Indies and British High Commission/British Council UWI scholar award for literature. She was a winner of the BBC Trust/UNESCO Communication Initiative’s Development Policy Blogging for New Media.
She was a pioneer of a genre of environmental journalism in the Caribbean, and introduced the genre of agricultural journalism through establishment of the CTA/IICA/CARDI Media Awards for Excellence in Agricultural Journalism, having also spearheaded and worked for the creation and development of other funding and awards schemes as the Trinidad Theatre Workshop Fund for Literature, Culture and Drama; Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago Media Awards for Excellence in Journalism; bpTT Luminaries of Journalism Awards; Trinidad and Tobago Association of Publishers and Broadcasters Awards for Media Excellence, and as an adjudicator with the student awards committee of the Accreditation Council of Trinidad and Tobago Excellence in Higher Education Award scheme.
She has addressed such forums as the World Summit of Information Society; World Summit on Arts and Culture, Commonwealth Diversity Conferences, International Conferences on Cultural Policy Research, Chatham House Dialogue of UNESCO, Brussels Briefings of the ACP-EU, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) among others. A format for such round-table engagement she successfully piloted in the Caribbean to explore solutions towards food security was adopted in the model used at the ACP-EU International Seminar on Media and Agriculture in Brussels organized by the CTA, to which she also coordinated the Caribbean participation.
She served as the Trinidad and Tobago Representative on the UNESCO Executive Board and chaired the Trinidad and Tobago National Commission for UNESCO and the National Museum and Art Gallery, and sat on committees as the Expert Panel on Arts and Culture. She served as an independent member of the Consultative Body to the Intergovernmental Committee of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention (2003). She was a founding member of the National Registry for Artistic and Cultural Workers, a pioneer organization for skills mapping in the Caribbean, and the national Tourism Heritage Committee.
A model for cross sectoral engagement she devised for the Caribbean was adopted by the CTA/ACP-EU for its international seminar on media and agriculture.
This has taken her across the Caribbean to Antigua, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Guyana Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago and across the globe, working and volunteering in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean towards advancing the MDGs through agencies of the UN as UNESCO, UNDP, UNIFEM and WSIS; the Commonwealth Foundation, organs of the Organisation of American States, the Inter-American Institute for Agriculture, and units of CARICOM.