Jennifer Hosten , BAHons / 90 , MA / 92

Jennifer Hosten’s education and career have taken her between her native Grenda and Canada, and now she makes her home in both countries. After working in customer relations and training in broadcasting, Hosten won the Miss World contest in 1970, after which she traveled the world making public appearances and entertaining American troops with comedian Bob Hope. But Hosten left the world of entertainment to pursue her education in political science at Carleton, after which she was appointed Grenada’s High Commissioner to Canada in 1978, serving two Grenadian governments prior to and following the Grenadian Revolution in 1979.

Hosten also worked with the Canadian government, with the Department of Canadian Heritage, the International Development Research Centre and the Canadian International Development Agency. In 1998 she was seconded as technical advisor on trade to the Caribbean Community and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States. Her final post was to serve as a Canadian diplomat in Dhaka, Bangladesh, from 2002 to 2004.

Author of The Effect of a North American Free Trade Agreement on the Commonwealth Caribbean, Hosten also published a memoire in 2008. Beyond Miss World, co-authored with her husband Shaun Sarsfield, recounts her journey from beauty pageants to the arena of international diplomacy.