PAUL RICHARDS be­longs to what is prover­bial­ly called the fourth es­tate, pos­sess­ing 35 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in ra­dio and tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing, man­age­ment and pro­duc­tion. Since 2010, he has served as pro­gramme man­ag­er, con­sul­tant an­chor/se­nior news and cur­rent af­fairs pro­duc­er at Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG). He has pro­duced and pre­sent­ed pro­grammes such as C Your­self and First Up. He an­chors live broad­casts and spe­cial pro­gram­ming in­clud­ing the State of Emer­gency News Spe­cial and sev­er­al cul­tur­al pro­duc­tions. His job scope al­so in­cludes en­sur­ing CN­MG con­forms to broad­cast law and con­ven­tion, as well as con­cep­tu­al­is­ing, pro­duc­ing and su­per­vis­ing post pro­duc­tion of lo­cal con­tent. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Mr Richards worked at Syn­er­gy TV, Gayelle the Chan­nel, CCN TV6, Ra­dio Net­work Ltd, 96.1 WEFM, 107.7 FM and Star 94.7 HD.

Richards is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a PhD in Ed­u­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy at An­drews Uni­ver­si­ty.

DR DHANAYSHAR MA­HABIR is a se­nior lec­tur­er in the De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine. He grad­u­at­ed with a PhD from Mc Gill Uni­ver­si­ty, De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics and Cen­tre for the study of Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries, in Cana­da, with a dis­ser­ta­tion en­ti­tled "Po­ten­tial Com­pe­ti­tion and Mul­ti-Prod­uct Ac­tiv­i­ty."

SOPHIA KAREN CHOTE (SC) grad­u­at­ed from King's Col­lege, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, with a Bach­e­lor of Laws (Hons) and com­plet­ed her Le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (LEC) at Hugh Wood­ing Law School in 1989. The St Au­gus­tine Girls' High School past stu­dent was the re­cip­i­ent of an open schol­ar­ship in Mod­ern Stud­ies. She was ad­mit­ted to the Bar in 1989 and has been a mem­ber of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T since then.

DAVID SMALL pos­sess­es 25 years of di­ver­si­fied ex­pe­ri­ence in sev­er­al spheres in­clud­ing en­er­gy busi­ness, reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight and cor­po­rate strat­e­gy. He earned a Mas­ter of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion (MBA) from Mid­dle­sex Uni­ver­si­ty, Lon­don, UK, in 2000, hav­ing been award­ed a gov­ern­ment schol­ar­ship.

IAN ROACH is an in­ter­na­tion­al lawyer, ad­vo­cate and diplo­mat spe­cial­is­ing in crim­i­nal law, in­ter­na­tion­al and mil­i­tary law, pub­lic and labour law. His 22-year le­gal ca­reer has fo­cused on ne­go­ti­a­tion, me­di­a­tion and lob­by­ing on be­half of in­ter­na­tion­al firms and gov­ern­ments in Eu­rope, South Africa and North Amer­i­ca. He has con­sult­ed and ad­vised sev­er­al gov­ern­ments and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies on var­i­ous le­gal, com­mer­cial and in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues.

JEN­NIFER RAF­FOUL grad­u­at­ed from Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty with an MSc in Eco­nom­ics for De­vel­op­ment in 2008. She holds a BA (Ho­n­ours) in Ap­plied Eco­nom­ics with a mi­nor in Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence from Queen's Uni­ver­si­ty, Cana­da, in 2006. She spent one year at Queen's In­ter­na­tion­al Study Cen­tre at Her­st­mon­ceux in the UK.

MELIS­SA VIC­KI RAMKISSOON, an en­gi­neer by pro­fes­sion, is a grad­u­ate of UWI, St Au­gus­tine, earn­ing both an MSc in Project Man­age­ment (Dis­tinc­tion) and a BSc in Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing (Hons). She has re­ceived cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Amer­i­can Pe­tro­le­um In­sti­tute and the In­fra­spec­tion In­sti­tute, USA.

STEPHEN CREESE works with one ob­jec­tive in mind, that is, to as­sist in the de­vel­op­ment and fa­cil­i­ta­tion of the growth of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Since 2014, he has served as a lo­cal gov­ern­ment con­sul­tant and mu­nic­i­pal con­sul­tant, de­vel­op­ing and pre­sent­ing ori­en­ta­tion sem­i­nars for new­ly elect­ed mu­nic­i­pal coun­cil­lors and de­vel­op­ing pol­i­cy/pro­ce­dure man­u­als. He pro­vides train­ing and coach­ing in prepa­ra­tion of mem­os, let­ters, mem­oirs, pro­cure­ment briefs, con­struc­tion briefs and cab­i­net notes.

TAU­REL SHRIKISSOON , a busi­ness­man, is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a PhD in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion from the An­glia Ruskin Uni­ver­si­ty, Unit­ed King­dom. He is the hold­er of a Mas­ter of Strate­gic Man­age­ment (Hons) from the Her­riot Watt Uni­ver­si­ty, an MBA from UWI, a BSc (Hons) in Man­age­ment from UWI, St Au­gus­tine, and a BSc (Hons) in Ap­plied Ac­count­ing from Ox­ford Brookes Uni­ver­si­ty, UK. He is a mem­ber of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants (AC­CA).