Fran­cis Joseph

Nine months af­ter he took over as Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, Barack Oba­ma has cho­sen a black woman as the new am­bas­sador-des­ig­nate to T&T.

Her name is Beat­rice Wilkin­son-Wel­ters, 58, of Mc Lean, Virgninia. She re­places Dr Roy Austin, who left Trinidad at the end of last year af­ter Oba­ma was elect­ed the new Pres­i­dent. Austin was the nom­i­nee of the last US Pres­i­dent George Bush. Austin, a close friend of Bush, spent more than six years as the am­bas­sador to T&T. A na­tive of St Vin­cent, Austin has re­turned to his home in Penn­syl­va­nia.

T&T was with­out a US am­bas­sador for most of this year un­til Oba­ma nom­i­nat­ed Wilkin­son-Wel­ters for the job. Her name has al­ready been for­ward­ed and ap­proved by the Patrick Man­ning gov­ern­ment. The T&T Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed that Wilkin­son-Wel­ters is pack­ing up her be­long­ings at her Vir­ginia home to come to Trinidad for the next three years. It is ex­pect­ed that she will ar­rive in Trinidad next month and present her cre­den­tials to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards. She is mar­ried to An­tho­ny Wel­ters and they have two sons, Bryant, 19, and An­drew, 17.

Wilkin­son-Wel­ters is the founder and chair­man of the An­Bryce Foun­da­tion and the Vin­cent Wilkin­son Foun­da­tion. These foun­da­tions fo­cus on un­der­served youth and young adults to pro­vide mul­ti­ple set­tings for their per­son­al and scholas­tic de­vel­op­ment.