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The keynote discussion at the Central Bank of Barbados’ upcoming Annual Review Seminar will explore “Innovative Financial Solutions for Climate Resilience.”
Meet the panellists for this session, which takes place at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, July 24, the first day of the five-day seminar.
Jennifer Doherty-Bigara is a Senior Climate Change Specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank. Her main role consists of advising and mainstreaming climate change policy recommendations in the portfolio with the Government as well as enhancing their impact through strategic initiatives.
With over 10 years of experience in the sustainability agenda, she has mainly focused on climate governance and national and local climate change policies, including nationally determined contributions (NDCs), long-term climate strategies (LTS), and sustainable development goals (SDGs), as well as fiscal policy and green budgeting, climate finance and long-term planning exercises with an adaptation approach.
Jennifer gained analytical and operational knowledge advising governments through the coordination of the NDC Invest Platform at its inception and mainstreaming climate change considerations in the IDB portfolio of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, from 2016-2019.
She also gained key insights as an external appointee in the Agence Française de Developpement (AFD), coordinating the efforts of the Adapt ‘Action Platform in the Gulf of Guinea and the Indian Ocean. In addition, she has climate finance expertise as well as fundraising skills based on her coordination of SECCI Funds, ACL, PROADAPT, and bilateral donations.
Jennifer holds a Master’s in International Development Policy from the McCourt School of Public Policy (MSPP), University of Georgetown and a Master’s in International Affairs from Sciences Po Toulouse.
Torsten Ehlers has been a Senior Financial Sector Expert at the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets department in Washington DC since September 2021.
He is a contributor and lead author of the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report flagship publication and specialises in sustainable finance, international banking, shadow banking, and derivatives markets. His work on these topics has been published widely, including in lead academic journals.
He is seconded from the Bank for International Settlements, where he has been working for 10 years both at the headquarters in Basel and its representative office in Hong Kong in various capacities. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, a Master’s in Economics from Warwick University, United Kingdom, and a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Dortmund, Germany.
Leslie Gittens is currently based in Barbados as Multi-Country Manager (Caribbean) for the United Nations Global Compact.
Prior to returning to Barbados in May of 2022 to join the Global Compact and UN Regional Coordinating Office teams, he was based in New York, U.S.A. as Vice Consul and Senior Business Development Officer with the Barbados International Business Promotion Agency (Invest Barbados) a role he assumed in September 2012. Before taking up that role in New York, he was based in Toronto, Canada for four years.
In his earlier career, he held the positions of Statistician with the Economic Planning Unit of the Ministry of Agriculture in Barbados and Research Fellow for the Eastern Caribbean with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
Mr. Gittens holds both a Bachelor’s of Science (BSc) in Economics and a Master’s of Science (MSc) in Financial and Business Economics from the University of the West Indies and an LLM in International Business Law from the University of London.
Donna Wellington joined CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank in 2005 after working 15 years in the financial services industry at Sagicor, EY Caribbean, and PwC in Barbados. In June 2013, after eight years with the Bank, she was appointed to her current role as Managing Director. In this position, Donna has responsibility for revenue generation and regulatory affairs across all key segments of the banking operations of the Barbados Operating Company in five countries (Barbados and four countries in the OECS).
She is a seasoned corporate banker with 34 years’ experience in the financial services sector. Her current focus is transformation of the payments ecosystem using best-in-class digital payment channels to assist with the wider transformation agenda as well as the renewable energy transformation in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.
For the period 2016-2021, Donna was the president of The Barbados Bankers Association (TBBA). In that role, she led the Barbados Creditors’ Group through the 2018 debt restructuring. She is currently the Association’s representative in the Social Partnership and BERT Monitoring Committee, which was set up to monitor Barbados’ current IMF programme.
Recently, Donna was appointed to the Fiscal Council, one of two councils set up to provide independent challenge and oversight over Government’s fiscal budget and medium-term strategies. She also is a member of the Financial Advisory Committee of the Caribbean Climate Smart Accelerator.
The moderator for the discussion will be Derek Gibbs, Climate Finance Specialist, Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).