KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaican lawyer, Michelle Gyles-McDonnough, through her recent appointment as United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) deputy assistant administrator and deputy regional director in Asia Pacific, resident in Bangkok, has become the highest-serving Jamaican within the United Nations system.

Gyles-McDonnough has practiced privately as a lawyer, served as advisor to the secretary general of the Organisation of American States (OAS) and has development experience within UNDP, including as UN resident coordinator for Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam.

Gyles-McDonnough recently served as the UN resident coordinator for Malaysia, UNDP resident representative for Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam, and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Representative for Malaysia since July 2013. Prior to this appointment (2008-2013), Gyles-McDonnough was UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative for Barbados and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States  (OECS).  She was programme adviser, Operations Support Group in the Executive Office of UNDP (2006-2008), and a regional adviser in Jamaica for six months during 2005.  She also served as coordinator for the Grenada Recovery Programme (2004-2005). In 2004 she was a teaching assistant at Harvard University, and assisted in course design for the master’s degree courses on global governance and managing development in a changing world.

From 1999-2004 she was chief, UNDP Caribbean Sub-Regional Resource Facility (SURF) in Trinidad and Tobago.

Before joining UNDP, Michelle worked with the Organisation of American States in Washington DC (1996-1999) as Adviser to the secretary-general.  She was legal adviser/alternate representative for the Embassy of Jamaica and Permanent Mission of Jamaica to the OAS, and practiced with Winthrop Stimson Putnam and Roberts as an attorney specialising in international trade.

Gyles-McDonnough began her career in 1990 in Zimbabwe as a law clerk for Harare Legal Projects Centre.

Michelle holds a Master in Public Administration from Harvard University, John F Kennedy School of Government, USA, a juris doctor (with honours in International and Foreign Law) from Columbia University School of Law, USA, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics with a minor in French from Bryn Mawr College, USA.

Michelle will take up her new assignment on January 15, 2017.