Paulette Dunn-Smith, a senior director in charge of the National Council on Technical Vocational Education and Training, is now acting as executive director of the HEART/Trust NTA.

She steps in to replace Donald Foster who resigned from the training agency on Tuesday, March 31, after two years running the agency.

Dunn-Smith is a founding member of Jamaica's NCTVET and has spearheaded "the development and implementation of standards for well over 120 occupational groups in most of the major sectors of the Jamaican economy," said a statement from the agency announcing the leadership transition.

top job

Foster, who served HEART for 15 years, got the top job after Robert Gregory left to run Jamaica Trade and Invest, another state operation in the business of wooing trade and investment to Jamaica.

HEART's training programmes incorporated some 100,000 enrollees in 2008.

Around the time that Foster joined the agency its corps of trainees was about 11,000 in 1994. Those numbers he said demonstrated that HEART was dynamic and enduring.

Dunn-Smith is completing doctoral studies in education at the University of Sheffield and is to defend her thesis this year.

She studied previously at Ohio University in the United States and the University of the West Indies, Mona campus. Her involvement in training extends to published papers workforce training, competency-based education, assessment and certification, as well as books on social studies used at both the primary and secondary school levels on professional organisations.

Her professional involvement extends beyond Jamaica as president of the Association of Commonwealth Examination and Accreditation Bodies, secretary of the Caribbean Association of National Training Agencies.

In Jamaica, Dunn-Smith is member of both the credit transfer committee of the University Council of Jamaica and the Prior-Learning Sub-Committee of the Council of Community Colleges of Jamaica, and a mentor for students of St Hugh's High School, her alma mater.