Keynotes

Tonni Brodber is the Deputy Representative with the UN Women Multi-Country Office Caribbean. Ms. Brodber is responsible for all programmes for the office and directly coordinates the programmes on climate change and disaster risk resilience.

Prior to this assignment, Ms. Brodber worked with UN Women Fiji Multi-Country Office as leader of the Advancing Gender Justice in the Pacific programme. Ms Brodber also served as the Gender Specialist for the United Nations Development Programme in South Africa and established - what is now the UN Women Country Office in Haiti.

Ms. Brodber’s work experience also includes lecturing in International Relations and Development Studies at Yanshan University in China, and directing and co-producing, a film on Haiti.

Ms. Brodber received her first degree from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus and has post graduate degrees in Development Studies and Business Administration from the London School of Economics and ESADE Business School in Barcelona.

Ms. Brodber is the mother of one son.

H.E. Janine Coye Felson is a senior diplomat in the Belize foreign service with a wide range of experience in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy. She received her juris doctor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her Certificate of Legal Education from the Norman Manley Law School- Jamaica. She is admitted to the State Bar of Wisconsin and the Bar Association of Belize.

Ambassador Felson started her diplomatic career in 1998 as legal counsel in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She conducted a comprehensive independent research to identify, catalogue and advise on Belize’s international treaties obligations; advised on bilateral treaties relating to trade, transport, labor and cultural exchanges and on Belize's membership in regional organizations. She also played a key advisory role on the Banana Dispute before the World Trade Organization and on the Belize-Guatemala territorial differendum.

In 2000, Ambassador Felson joined the Permanent Mission of Belize to the United Nations in New York as Minister Counsellor but remained a legal advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2005, she assumed the role of Charge d’ affaires a.i. with full oversight of the work of the Mission, and its consular section. After three years of distinguished service in this capacity, she was appointed Ambassador.

In this position, Ambassador Felson has gained considerable sustainable development expertise. As legal advisor to the Office of the President of the sixth-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly, she coordinated high level events on the rule of law and development and accountability frameworks for a new sustainable development agenda. More recently, she has served as lead negotiator for the Caribbean Community on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and continues to serve as lead finance coordinator for the Alliance of Small Island States in the multilateral climate change negotiation process.