Meet the Caribbean GDB Research Team!

After a period of recruiting we have managed to assemble a high quality, diverse team of experienced researchers, data experts and policy advocates to join the he Global Data Barometer Caribbean team and the worldwide community of the researchers participating in the GDB initiative.

In addition to a range of experiences with: open data; the use of data for monitoring or evaluating public service delivery; and training or capacity-building around the use of data to create socially valuable applications; several of the selected researchers have participated in previous editions of the Open Data Barometer, as well as the World Bank Open Data Readiness Assessment for countries in the Caribbean. The team therefore brings valuable perspective and insights from these collective experiences.

Our Team of Researchers

Fitzgerald Yaw, PhD

Fitzgerald (Gerry) Yaw is a Caribbean and US educated economic development professional who has been working on economic empowerment at the community, regional and national levels since the 1990s. His experience spans the Caribbean, the USA and Canada where he consults/works and does volunteer work on a range of environmental and governance issues. Gerry seeks to foster sustainable development by facilitating green economy initiatives and championing improved governance.

LauraJan Obermuller, PhD

Dr LauraJan Obermuller is Amazonanist/Caribbeanist Anthropologist of Guyanese descent and a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work, the UWI, Mona Campus. Laurajan’ s research interests and lecturing focuses mainly on gender, climate change, Amerindian cosmology, migration, applied anthropology. Her current project with the CaPRI seeks to investigate COVID-19 impact on deprived communities in Jamaica.

Louise Mathurin-Serieux

Louise Mathurin-Serieux is a dedicated research project management specialist, with over a decade of experience in managing and supporting research projects in the public and private sector. She is passionate about evidence-based policy-making, which fuels her advocacy for (open) data for development. She has been involved in a range of research projects; gaining experience in a range of qualitative and quantitative methods and establishing a keen knowledge of public policy...

Michael Yee Shui, PhD

Michael Yee Shui is a demographer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at The UWI, Mona Campus, Jamaica. He has over eighteen years of experience in teaching university-level courses in research methods, statistics and statistical computing, and consulting on research and data analysis projects. His areas of specialization are family demography and quantitative methods, and his research interests broadly concern family structure and child well-being....

Michelle McLeod, PhD

Dr. Michelle McLeod is at The UWI, Mona Campus, Jamaica. Her tourism industry experience spans over 30 years. Her research interests include knowledge networks, destination and policy networks, and service productivity. Dr. McLeod's two co-edited books are 'Knowledge Networks and Tourism' and 'Tourism Management in Warm-water Island Destinations'. Dr. McLeod is the recipient of several Principal’s Awards for Research.

Shurland George M.Sc. PMP

Shurland George is a researcher who has done various capacity development projects in the Caribbean since 2016 and has a keen interest in Caribbean sustainable development. Main areas of interest include tourism, education and all things data. Currently living in Toronto, Canada but hails from the great country of Trinidad and Tobago and dreams of the day when he will return to his homeland. Soon come!

Victor Gonzalez, PhD

Victor Gonzalez, PhD is a professor and researcher at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, at the Faculty of Sciences and Engineering. His areas of interest are Data Science, Smart and Sustainable Cities and Open Data. He has led multiple projects with national and international funds to incentive the usage of data for decision making in public and private institutions in the Dominican Republic.

Yacine Khelladi

Yacine Khelladi is an economist and digital activist working in the field of ICT4D and Digital Transformation for over 25 years. His work spans many levels from developing, implementing or evaluating national, sectoral and regional digital policies worldwide, to being embedded in rural underserved communities, facilitating digital empowerment. He still finds time to be a happy father, a joyful drummer, an organic farmer, a yoga practitioner and a paragliding pilot....
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Over the next 2 - 3 months, (and beyond), this team will be engaged with desk research and expert surveys that examine policies, practices, datasets, and research related to the governance, capability, availability, and use of data in the target countries for the study. Additionally, some researchers will also be involved in regional dissemination activities which are anticipated to take place after the substantive field research is completed and synthesized.

GDB Coordinating Team - Caribbean Regional Hub

The team coordinating the Caribbean Regional Hub are established researchers themselves, based at the Mona School of Business & Management, UWI.

Dr. Maurice McNaughton, Principal Director for the COI,  has a track record of academic applied research and has managed a portfolio of research grant funding and external partnerships (multilateral, public and private sector) in excess of US$1M over the past 10 years. He is currently Director of the Centre for IT-enabled Innovation at the Mona School of Business & Management and his active research interest spans the domain of emerging Open ICT ecosystems and Digitalization.

 

Dr. Lila Rao-Graham is the Deputy Executive Director and a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems at the Mona School of Business and Management, The University of the West Indies (UWI). Her research interests include Business Intelligence; Data Quality and Decision Support Systems with a particular focus on providing organizations with solutions in order to leverage the value from data for effective decision making

 

Dr. Suzana Russell is a Senior Lecturer at the Mona School of Business and Management, The University of the West Indies (UWI). Her research interests and expertise include sustainable manufacturing, industrial ecology and operations management. She was part of the research team for the Regional Open Data Barometer for Latin America and the Caribbean 2020