Byron James – Executive Director

As the ACA’s first Executive Director, Byron James has been both a federal and provincial public servant and in 2014 was awarded the Lieutenant Governor’s IPAC Award for Excellence in Public Administration and in 2015 an Atlantic Award from the Public Policy Forum.

Byron 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 market 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.