Patsy Blair Robertson (28 August 1933 – 18 August 2020) was a Jamaican journalist and diplomat, who was Director of Information at the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Official Spokesperson for The Commonwealth from 1983 to 1994. She played a significant role in conjunction with Sir Shridath "Sonny" Ramphal, the Commonwealth's second Secretary-General, in that organisation's long battle against apartheid in South Africa. She later served with UNICEF, the UN, and as founding Chair of the Ramphal Institute, a London-based not-for-profit organization with a mission to advance knowledge and research in such areas of policy as development, education and environmental issues. Career Patsy Robertson (née Pyne) was born in the Malvern district of Saint Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, the fifth child of eight. In 1945, she won a coveted scholarship to attend Wolmer's Girls' School in Kingston (where her sisters Kathleen and Helen were also educated). She worked briefly as a newspaper journalist in Jamaica before going to the US and attending New York University (where her circle included James Baldwin), graduating with a liberal arts degree. In the late 1950s she travelled to Britain; in an interview in 2000 she said: "I got a job at the BBC ... working in the newsroom of the World Service at Bush House where they prepared the news bulletins. And from there, I joined the London office of the Federal Government of the West Indies which had begun to recruit staff for the proposed diplomatic service when independence was given to this new Caribbean nation. ... then the Federation broke up and Jamaica became independent in 1962. I was sent for training at the then Commonwealth Relations Office and remained in London." During the 1960s she was involved with the anti-apartheid movement, and having left the Jamaican diplomatic service she joined the Commonwealth Secretariat on its establishment in 1965, and for the next 28 years handled its media affairs, disseminating information about the Commonwealth worldwide. She was present at the 1978 conference of Commonwealth non-governmental organisations in Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, that led to the foundation of the Commonwealth Journalists' Association, and would remain, in the words of Lord Black of Brentwood, chairman of the CPU Media Trust, "throughout her lifetime and her distinguished career, a doughty champion of press freedom". She served as the Secretariat's Director of Information and the Official Spokesperson for The Commonwealth at international conventions, including Commonwealth Heads of Government