The Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA) has ap­point­ed Ar­lene Wal­lace-Romero as its new Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, mark­ing a ma­jor lead­er­ship tran­si­tion as founder Paula Lu­cie-Smith steps aside af­ter more than three decades at the helm.

Wal­lace-Romero, a sea­soned man­age­ment and en­gi­neer­ing ex­ec­u­tive, has vol­un­teered with AL­TA since 1999 and held roles rang­ing from class co­or­di­na­tor and tu­tor train­er to board mem­ber. She pre­vi­ous­ly held se­nior man­age­ment po­si­tions at Carib Brew­ery and the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (PLIPDE­CO), where she led strate­gic trans­for­ma­tion and op­er­a­tional im­prove­ment projects.

“As an en­gi­neer, what re­al­ly im­pressed me about AL­TA was its sys­tems,” Wal­lace-Romero said. “I could see how my ex­pe­ri­ence in man­age­ment sci­ence ap­plied to ed­u­ca­tion to en­sure con­sis­tent qual­i­ty and fo­cus on the peo­ple we set out to serve.”