Spring 2024 Commencement Speakers
The Spring Commencement speaker is Ambassador Shorna-Kay Richards, currently serving as the Jamaican ambassador to Japan. A career diplomat, Shorna-Kay Richards has been a member of the Jamaican Foreign Service since 1994. She is currently the Ambassador of Jamaica to Japan, with concurrent accreditation to Australia, Indonesia, The Philippines, South Korea, and New Zealand.
Ambassador Richards served previously as the Director for Bilateral Relations in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade (2016-2020). She has also served as the Deputy Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the United Nations, New York (2012-2016). Her other overseas postings include the Jamaican High Commission in South Africa (2009-2012), the Permanent Mission of Jamaica to the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. (1998-2001), and the Jamaican Embassy in Washington, D.C. (2003-2004).
She was appointed as a member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters in January 2022 and the Board of Trustees of the UN Disarmament Research Institute. She currently serves as the Chair of these two bodies since January 2024.
Ambassador Richards has vast experience in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy. In the bilateral arena, she has worked extensively in supporting the management of Jamaica’s bilateral relations to secure increased access to official development assistance, technical cooperation, human resource development, and trade and investment opportunities.
At the multilateral level, she has worked actively in the field of international security and disarmament. During her assignment to the United Nations, she served as Vice-Chair of the UN Disarmament Commission. She was also a facilitator for the Arms Trade Treaty negotiations and a lead negotiator for the UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty process. She was also actively involved in negotiations on oceans and the law of the sea.
She holds a master’s degree in International Policy and Practice from the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University, USA. She also obtained a Bachelor of Arts from The University of the West Indies. She was a United Nations Disarmament Fellow in 2005.
The student speaker was selected by graduating students through a vote. Dayna Brown is the student speaker this year and will graduate with a Master of Arts in Translation and Localization Management. As the daughter to U.S. Air Force parents, she spent most of her life moving around the United States and the larger world beyond, which inspired her love for languages and learning. She moved to Shanghai, China in 2017 to start learning Mandarin Chinese and obtain a degree as a first generation college student. She now holds a BA from New York University Shanghai with a degree in Global China Studies and a World History degree from East China Normal University.
During her two years at MIIS, she became a leader in her community; first, through serving as the Translation and Localization Management Program Representative and later as the TLM Program Graduate Assistant. In the 2022-2023 academic year, she received the Katherine Davis Fellowship in Conflict Transformation, which led her to create her language accessibility passion project, Period Local, a free resource for multilingual menstrual health information that aims to bridge the gap in language education and health.
Dayna has been a speaker for Women in Localization and multiple Mini-Monterey Model events. As she sets forth with her master’s degree, she seeks to continue fostering the leadership and management skills she learned at MIIS, both in herself and others. Beyond her professional and academic life, Dayna is an avid rock climber and has a passion for writing and art.