A dual mile­stone in lo­cal mil­i­tary his­to­ry was ob­served be­tween last week and this week, as the first-ever woman and at­tor­ney were pro­mot­ed to the rank of colonel in the T&T Reg­i­ment.

A brief state­ment by the Reg­i­ment yes­ter­day con­firmed that Col Jozette McLean was pro­mot­ed last Fri­day, af­ter 29 years of ser­vice.

McLean, who served as the di­rec­tor of strate­gic lo­gis­tics, holds a Mas­ters in Mil­i­tary Arts and Sci­ence (MMAS) from the Com­mand and Gen­er­al Staff Col­lege, Fort Leav­en­worth, Kansas, and led a de­ploy­ment lo­gis­tics team to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines in 2021. She was award­ed a Pi­o­neer Award by for­mer Chief of De­fence Staff Hay­den Pritchard in 2018.

In a post on their of­fi­cial Face­book ac­count, the Reg­i­ment con­grat­u­lat­ed McLean as the first woman to achieve the mile­stone, de­scrib­ing it as a “ca­reer de­fined by pro­fes­sion­al­ism, re­silience and un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to du­ty.”

Al­so pro­mot­ed was Col Shel­don Ra­manan, an at­tor­ney who serves as the Reg­i­ment’s In­spec­tor Gen­er­al, fol­low­ing a 17-year-long mil­i­tary ca­reer, where he earned qual­i­fi­ca­tions at de­fence and se­cu­ri­ty in­sti­tu­tions in the US, the UK, Italy, Ger­many, Aus­tralia, the Nether­lands and Switzer­land.

As In­spec­tor Gen­er­al, he has been in­volved in au­dit­ing the Reg­i­ment’s firearms and am­mu­ni­tions re­serves.

Ra­manan ap­plied for the post of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and was con­sid­ered as a can­di­date on three oc­ca­sions.

As an at­tor­ney, he served as a se­nior mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor and chief le­gal ad­vi­sor to six Chiefs of De­fence Staffs, while al­so con­tribut­ing as le­gal coun­sel on is­sues in­volv­ing counter-ter­ror­ism, mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty and mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions.

Ra­manan, sources say, has re­ceived com­men­da­tions from for­mer US Sec­re­tary of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty John Kel­ly and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in the Ba­hamas for ad­dress­ing re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues.