ELSA LEO-RHYNIE

Director

Professor Elsa Leo-Rhynie is the former Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus and is the first woman to be so appointed. She was named Professor Emerita by the UWI following her retirement in 2007. 

Entering the UWI on a Jamaica Government Teacher’s Scholarship, Professor Leo-Rhynie obtained a B.Sc. degree in the Natural Sciences - Botany, Zoology and Chemistry.   Postgraduate studies in Education, with a concentration on educational psychology, led to a PhD degree from the same institution in 1978.
Her career in education has included stints as a high school teacher, lecturer and senior lecturer in the UWI School of Education as well as Professor of Gender and Development Studies, UWI. She also served as Executive Director of the Institute of Management & Production (IMP) which is now part of the University College of the Caribbean.

Professor Leo-Rhynie has chaired the Dudley Grant Memorial Trust, which advocates on behalf of early childhood education in Jamaica, for the past nineteen years; and she has served as a member of Council of the Caribbean Examinations Council, the University Council of Jamaica, the University of Technology, Jamaica, as well as the governing Boards of the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica, the University Hospital of the West Indies, United Way of Jamaica, and the ICWI Group Foundation.  She currently chairs the GraceKennedy Foundation.  She also served as a member of the Privy Council of Jamaica from 1996 to 2006, and was awarded the national honour of Officer of Distinction (Commander Class) in 2000.

She was appointed to the Board of the St. Andrew High School Foundation in 2008.