Minister of Foreign Affairs EP Chet Greene wasted no time in sending his newest Ambassadors-At-Large Samantha Marshall and Joanne Massiah on their first overseas assignments.

Speaking at the swearing-in ceremony held at Government House on Monday morning, Greene announced that Ambassador Marshall would represent Antigua and Barbuda at a meeting of the EU CARIFORUM summit in the Dominican Republic on June 21, while Ambassador Massiah would travel to Panama to join Sir Ronald Saunders as part of the Antigua and Barbuda delegation at the Organization of American States (OAS) and Association of Caribbean States (ACS) conferences.

Greene framed the immediate deployments as deliberate, telling those gathered that the Foreign Service demands readiness at short notice.

“A problem pops up in CARICOM and you are called to go down to Guyana. In the OECS you are called to go to St. Lucia,” he said, adding that the ambassadors needed to “get a feel of what the Foreign Service really is all about” from the outset.

The ceremony, presided over by Governor General’s Deputy Sir Clare Roberts, saw both women take oaths of allegiance, office, and secrecy before receiving their instruments of appointment.

Marshall, a former member of parliament for St. Mary’s South and the first woman elected to parliament under the ABLP banner, and Massiah, a former senator and attorney-at-law, were appointed as ambassadors-at-large — a designation that carries no fixed geographic posting but allows the government to deploy them across multiple jurisdictions on special assignments.

Greene acknowledged the cross-partisan dimension of the appointments, noting that Massiah had most recently served as a senator for the opposition UPP, and framing her inclusion as consistent with Prime Minister Gaston Browne’s stated goal of building “a single nation” through meritocratic service.