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.”