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.”

She said she in­tends to build on AL­TA’s lega­cy, with a fo­cus on ex­pand­ing AL­TA On­line and pro­mot­ing lit­er­a­cy learn­ing as an ac­ces­si­ble life skill. “AL­TA and Paula have cre­at­ed a lega­cy that is worth pro­tect­ing and sus­tain­ing,” she said. “In the near fu­ture, we want to share AL­TA On­line with the Caribbean di­as­po­ra and trans­form our so­ci­ety in­to one that views learn­ing ba­sic lit­er­a­cy skills just as they would view learn­ing to play a gui­tar or to swim.”

Lu­cie-Smith said she iden­ti­fied Wal­lace-Romero as a po­ten­tial suc­ces­sor a decade ago. “From my first con­ver­sa­tion with Ar­lene af­ter I read her tu­tor ap­pli­ca­tion, she im­pressed me,” she said. “She has since ex­celled at every key role with­in AL­TA. As she al­so em­bod­ies the cul­ture and phi­los­o­phy of AL­TA, I be­gan talk­ing to Ar­lene at least a decade ago about tak­ing over as AL­TA CEO.”

She added that Wal­lace-Romero’s in­dus­try and busi­ness ex­pe­ri­ence are what AL­TA needs now to con­tin­ue ex­pand­ing AL­TA On­line. “I am al­ready en­joy­ing hav­ing Ar­lene full time at AL­TA,” Lu­cie-Smith said.

The Board of Di­rec­tors said Wal­lace-Romero’s ap­point­ment po­si­tions AL­TA for its next phase of growth and in­no­va­tion.