Deborah Jean-Baptiste-Samuel
Deborah Jean-Baptiste-Samuel is an attorney-at-law. She holds a BA Hons in English Literature, Post-Graduate Diploma in International Relations, and LLB Hons and LEC.

As an accomplished writer, she earned a Nuffield Fellowship for journalism at Wolfson College Cambridge University. Deborah served ten years as a journalist and earned four journalism awards.

Deborah is a versatile creative powerhouse in dramatic performance, and an orator par excellence. As a motivational speaker she is exceptional and has become an icon in the field of oratory. Her pioneering activity led to the formation of The Oratory Foundation, an institution dedicated to training in the oral arts, drama, public-speaking, and poetry in performance. As founder and leader of The Oratory Foundation, Deborah trains children and teenagers to be fluent in oral expression, dramatic monologues, poetry writing and performance, public speaking, choral speaking, debating and other creative forms of the spoken word. She has staged nine Shakespeare plays to date, the latest being Twelfth Night in 2023. In July 2017, she staged an excerpt from Shakespeare’s The Tempest entitled ‘This Isle is Mine’ and in August 2018 an excerpt from “The Taming of the Shrew”, both in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.

Deborah is the author of fifteen books. Three were launched in 2020 – ‘Local Habitation and Name – Caribbean Interpretation of Shakespeare’; ‘In Full Bloom’; and ‘Caribbean Contemplations on Shakespeare’. She also has a podcast with direct relevance to a local embrace of Shakespeare.  Her newest book “Show Me Yuh Motion – Caribbean Gesture in the Performance of Shakespeare” was launched on May 28, 2023.

In 2021, Deborah received the Hummingbird Medal Gold for Youth Development.

October 2023