Sir Courtney Blackman served three terms as founding Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados and as Barbados’ Alternate Governor to the IMF from June 1972 to March 1987.
From 1987 to 1994, he was an International Business Consultant to several governments, central banks, multilateral institutions and international corporations; he also served as Director General of several corporations and financial institutions. He joined the diplomatic corps in January 1995 as Barbados’ Ambassador to the United States and Permanent Representative to the Organisation of American States. He held this post until September 2000.
Sir Courtney held an Honours degree in Modern History from the University of The West Indies, and a Ph.D from the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, N.Y., where he majored in Money and Banking, with a minor in International Business. He later worked on Wall Street as an Economist from 1968 to 1971 at the now defunct Irving Trust Company, going on to become Associate Professor of Management at Hofstra University on Long Island, New York.
An authority on central banking in developing countries, Sir Courtney lectured at major universities in Britain, Canada and the USA. He also published numerous papers and three books: The Practice of Persuasion, a collection of speeches, in 1982; Central Banking in Theory and Practice: A Small State Perspective, in 1995 and the Practice of Economic Management
Sir Courtney Blackman passed away on March 16, 2021 at the age of 88.