KINGSTON, Jamaica — Julia Hyatt has been appointed as the latest Ambassador-designate of Jamaica to Mexico.

Hyatt will be Jamaica’s 12th Head of Mission based in Mexico City, since the Jamaican Embassy first opened in 1967.

She is expected to assume duties by June.  She will also have jurisdiction for Jamaica’s relations with other countries in the Central American region, including Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

The career diplomat has been a member of the Jamaican Foreign Service for more than 34 years, and currently serves the foreign ministry as its under-secretary with responsibility for the Bilateral, Regional and Hemispheric Affairs Division.

“Ms Hyatt is a well-seasoned and dedicated Foreign Service officer, who brings to the position over 34 years’ of experience in multilateral, regional and bilateral diplomacy. I am confident that she will use the opportunity of this new diplomatic assignment to strengthen the good relations and cooperation between Jamaica and Mexico,” said Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator Kamina Johnson Smith as she made the announcement.

The diplomat’s sojourn in the ministry has been marked by service as first secretary/consul in the Jamaican Mission in Geneva, counsellor and chargé d’affaires at the Jamaican Embassy in Mexico City, minister-counsellor/deputy chief of mission at the Jamaican Embassy in Beijing, alternate representative at the Permanent Mission of Jamaica to the Organisation of American States in Washington, DC and director of International Organisations Department at the ministry’s headquarters in Kingston.

Hyatt holds a Master of Arts degree in international relations from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University in Massachusetts and a Bachelor of Arts in political science and spanish from the University of the West Indies, Mona.

Jamaica and the United Mexican States established diplomatic relations on February 4, 1967.