Mrs. Jacqueline Sampson Meiguel was sworn in as the sixth Ombudsman of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago on Monday, May 20, 2024 by The Honourable Bridgid Annisette-George, MP, Speaker of the House.
Mrs. Sampson Meiguel is an attorney at law by profession and a career public servant. She also holds a B.Sc. in Public Administration and Law from the Cave Hill campus and an M.Sc. in Government from the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies.
Mrs. Sampson Meiguel’s public service career has been dedicated to the Legislature where she served as Clerk of the House for over twenty years. In that capacity, she served as Administrative Head of the Legislature and its Accounting Officer as well as its principal advisor on the law and practice of Parliament.
She also served the wider region as Regional Secretary of the Association of Commonwealth Parliaments of the Caribbean, the Americas and the Atlantic Region during which time she was called upon to provide expert guidance to regional Parliaments on mechanisms to monitor the Executive branch of government to ensure accountability, transparency and the adherence to laws and regulations.
Mrs. Sampson Meiguel has served as an expert facilitator on a number of Commonwealth parliamentary study groups and seminars both home and abroad. she has drafted rules and developed structured frameworks for the oversight of public authorities, the reviewing of budget allocations, the scrutinizing of policy implementation and the investigating of the conduct of public officials. She is a proud member of the first cohort of the Caribbean Leadership Development Programme, a programme that seeks to create an enabling environment for the development of better, more effective Public Sector leadership within the region.