Jessica Byron-Reid is a national of St. Kitts and Nevis, with undergraduate and initial postgraduate degrees from UWI CaveHill and UWI St. Augustine, and a PhD. from Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales, University of Geneva (now Graduate Institute of Geneva). Her professional background is in the foreign service of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States countries followed by academic teaching, research and administrative leadership in programmes at the International Institute of Social Studies in Den Haag NL, University of the West Indies Mona Jamaica and Institute of International Relations UWI St. Augustine Trinidad.

Most of Jessica's practitioner and academic work has been centred on the political economy of development and human security in SIDS, their place in the global multilateral system, and the role of regionalism/inter-regionalism in shaping their development spaces. She has numerous publications based on these themes and has worked with a wide cross-section of colleagues in the multilateral community and in universities and civil society groups in Latin America and the Caribbean, North America and Europe.

RESI thematic areas: International alliances, Equitable societies