Since July 2009, the small Caribbean island nation of
Grenada, which the United States invaded in 1983, has been represented in the U.S. by Gillian M.S. Bristol, who is concurrently accredited as Ambassador to
Mexico and Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States (
OAS).
Gillian Bristol was born circa 1960 in Grenada to mother Ruth and father
Carol Bristol, a prominent Grenadian attorney who once served as Grenada’s Chief Justice. She earned a law degree from the University of the West Indies in Cave Hill,
Barbados, in 1988. From 1993 to 2008, Bristol worked for the OAS, as secretary of several committees of the OAS Permanent Council, in meetings related to the General Assembly, and as Program Manager at the Inter-American Committee against Terrorism. She was also
elected, in 2007, as the first Caribbean Islander to be President of the
OAS Staff Association, which represents OAS employees to OAS management.
Gillian Bristol is divorced from Cayman Islands attorney
Lloyd Samson, with whom she has a son, Dominic Bristol-Samson.