PEOPLE
The Most Honourable
Dame Sandra Mason
A Woman of Many Firsts
Ever since enrolling among the first student cohort to pursue an indigenous law degree at The University of the West Indies more than fifty years ago, Barbados inaugural President, Her Excellency The Most Honourable Dame Sandra Mason continues to chalk up a number of firsts in an impressive legal and public service career.
D
ame Sandra made history once again last 30 November when she became Barbados’s first indigenous Head of State upon the island’s transition to a republic, adding to a remarkable list of achievements. It was the latest accomplishment in what has been a stellar career of a distinguished UWI pelican. The previous month, Dame Sandra was conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) degree by The UWI, Cave Hill Campus in recognition of her outstanding contribution to public service. Born on 17 January 1949 in East Point, St. Philip, the former jurist attended the St. Catherine’s Primary School and Queen’s College. She went on to serve as a teacher at the Princess Margaret Secondary School and later worked at Barclays Bank in Barbados and Jamaica. Dame Sandra obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from the Cave Hill Campus in 1973, and a Certificate of Legal Education from the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad in 1975. The newly minted attorney then went on to blaze a trail in the legal field, achieving several firsts throughout her career. She is the first Barbadian female attorney-at-law to graduate from the Hugh Wooding Law School, the first Barbadian to be appointed as a member of the London-based Commonwealth Secretariat Arbitral Tribunal, the first 82
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