Byron James

Byron James has been both a federal and provincial public servant. He began his career in Moncton NB as Atlantic Regional Economist with the Unemployment Insurance Commission. From there, he progressed through increasingly more responsible assignments in a great diversity of areas. These included economic and labour marker analysis, education and training, natural resource development, environment, local government, and intergovernmental affairs.

For much of his career, Byron has been involved with human resource development issues. With the federal government in the 70’s and 80’s he worked on economic and labour market forecasting and later managed the federal labour training programs in NB. With the provincial government, Byron served as both Assistant Deputy Minister in Advanced Education and Training as well as ADM for Education. In 1998 he was appointed Deputy Minister and served as DM in various Departments in New Brunswick for 16 years, including Deputy of Post Secondary Education, Training and Labour and Deputy of Education. In his last 4 years with the provincial government, he served as Clerk of Executive Council and Secretary to Cabinet.

Since retiring from the provincial public service, Byron has continued an active involvement with education and training matters. He is currently supporting a university initiative to launch a comprehensive experiential learning system in New Brunswick. He is also Executive Director of Atlantic Colleges Atlantique. ACA is the association of all seven public colleges in Atlantic Canada.

In 2014 Byron was awarded the Lieutenant Governor’s IPAC Award for Excellence in Public Administration and in 2015 an Atlantic Award from the Public Policy Forum.

“I have been a Board member of LearnSphere for some time and I admire the ability of the organization to renew itself and to respond to changing regional growth priorities.”