Rowena Bethel is Director/CEO of the National Insurance Board, the social insurance Fund of The Bahamas. She is a Bahamian national and an attorney-at-law.
She has served for 31+ years in The Bahamas’ Government service variously as Regulatory Consultant/Office of the Prime Minister; Legal Advisor/Ministry of Finance; financial services regulator; and Legal Advisor/National Insurance Board.
She is the main architect of The Bahamas’ laws governing Electronic Communications and Transactions, Computer Misuse and Data Protection; and the Government’s first policy statement on the Digital Agenda.
She has also worked as an independent global regulatory consultant on public governance, international tax policy and ICT law and policy.
Rowena is Vice Chair of both the UN Committee of Experts in Public Administration (CEPA) and the ISSA Technical Commission on Employment Policies. CEPA is an advisory of UN ECOSOC that examines how public administrations can be enhanced to support the SDG agenda. Rowena also participates in the work on the UN eGovernment Survey and annual eGovernment awards forum.
She was previously a member of UN Strategy Council for GAID; the UN Committee of Experts on Tax Cooperation; and The Bahamas’ representative on the OECD Global Tax Forum.
She is Deputy Chair of the Cell Liberalization Task Force and a member of the National Health Insurance Task Force. She previously served as Deputy Chair of The Bahamas Telecommunications Company.
Rowena holds an LL.B (Leicester University); an LL.M in IT and Telecommunications Law and Policy (Strathclyde University) and a Diploma in Offshore eCommerce Law from IBLS. She is a member of the Bar of England and Wales, and of The Bahamas Bar
