Since June 2010, the Ambassador to the United States from the Caribbean island nation of Dominica (population: 73,000) has been Hubert J. Charles, a longtime employee of UNESCO who is also a former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education and a former President of Dominica State College.

 

Born in Portsmouth, Dominica, on October 23, 1948, Charles grew up in Dominica and completed his secondary education in 1969 at the Dominica Grammar School, an institution whose alumni include four of the country’s seven Prime Ministers, and three of its six Presidents. Charles earned a B.A. in History and Economics at the University of the West Indies in Bridgetown, Barbados, in 1972, taught History and Commerce at Dominica Grammar School from September 1972 to July 1974, and then studied at Johns Hopkins University, earning an M.A. in Atlantic History and Culture in 1977. 

 

Returning home to Dominica to work in education administration, Charles served briefly (July to October 1977) as Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture, and soon became the first Dominican to be named Headmaster of Dominica Grammar School, a position he held from October 1977 to June 1981. Going back to government service, Charles was Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture from January 1981 to December 1985.

 

He then left the employ of the Dominican government, serving the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States as an Advisor on Special Programs from June 1986 to October 1995. In January 1991, he took on the concurrent role as UNESCO Representative to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, based in Bridgetown, Barbados. Charles left both positions simultaneously, relocating in November 1995 to Pretoria, South Africa, where he served as a UNESCO Educational Advisor until April 1998, when he left Pretoria for Maputo, Mozambique, to serve as UNESCO Representative and Head of Office from June 1998 to December 2000.

 

He served his longest stint for UNESCO in Abuja, Nigeria, where, from January 2001 to October 2006, he was UNESCO Representative and Director of the Office for the Economic Community of West African States, which is comprised of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. At the end of 2006, after eleven years in Africa, Charles returned to Dominica to serve as President of Dominica State College, which he did from May 2007 until his appointment as Ambassador to the US in early 2010.

 

Charles is married. He speaks English fluently, and has a working knowledge of French and Portuguese. He is concurrently accredited as Dominican Ambassador to the Organization of American States. In 2008 Charles published a collection of essays titled Advocacy and Change: Promoting Innovative Approaches to Education and Culture.  

-Matt Bewig