Dawn Pierre-Nathoniel is the Chief Sustainable Development and Environment Officer in the Department of Sustainable Development in Saint Lucia. Dawn Pierre-Nathoniel has built a versatile career drawing from multidisciplinary training and experience in oceans, climate change, biodiversity, protected areas, international negotiations, and policy development. Her early certification as an underwater SCUBA diver sparked an appreciation for oceans, leading to a 12-year tenure as a Fisheries Biologist at the Department of Fisheries.

There, Dawn led marine ecosystem management programs and represented Saint Lucia at various international conventions. Dawn's journey in biodiversity advanced significantly during a three-year period as Project Coordinator for the first National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP), the first National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the pilot phase of the Clearing House Mechanism (CHM), implemented by UNEP/GEF. Transitioning to climate change, Dawn coordinated the Special Programme on Adaptation to Climate Change (SPACC), a GEF-World Bank project with the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (5Cs), focusing on water conservation and sustainability through public-private partnerships and critical infrastructure resilience.

Over 12 years at the Department of Sustainable Development, Dawn led and supported sustainable development initiatives in policy formulation and review, strategic planning, international negotiations, project and program management, resource mobilization, and inter-agency coordination. Dawn's expertise spans biodiversity and biosafety, chemicals and hazardous waste management, climate change, ocean governance, protected areas management, science and technology, sustainable development goals (SDGs), sustainable consumption and production (SCP), and the policy and legislative agenda.

Significantly, Dawn Pierre-Nathoniel led the policy development process for the National Adaptation Plan (NAP), sectoral plans for various sectors, and climate change legislation. With over a decade of experience in climate change negotiations, Dawn has been involved in adaptation and loss and damage discussions since 2009.

From 2015, Dawn Pierre-Nathoniel served as the Thematic Coordinator for Loss and Damage on behalf of CARICOM and AOSIS, and as the representative of SIDS on the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM ExCom) for Loss and Damage, co-chairing two terms until the 12th meeting in 2020.