DR. LOIS PARKES
Dr. Lois Parkes is currently the Regional Project Manager with the Caribbean Leadership Project since January 2016. Prior to that, she served for over twenty (20) years in the Public Service in Jamaica, in varying capacities, in the Office of the Prime Minister, the Office of the Cabinet and the Office of the Services Commissions. Some of the key positions she has held include that of Chief Technical Director with responsibility for the development of the Strategic HR capacity of the public sector, and Chief Personnel Officer in the Office of the Services Commissions, where she had overall responsibility for Providing leadership to the Office of the Services Commissions to ensure the provision of quality policy advice to the Police, Public, Judicial, Municipal and Parish Councils Services Commissions in relation to appointments, training, discipline and retirement of employees in the Public Service, the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the local authorities and the Judiciary.
She has been integrally involved in a number of public sector transformation initiatives since 1999, including the establishment of the output-focused Performance Management and Appraisal System for the Public Sector, the decentralisation of several HR functions, and the transformation of numerous Executive Agencies. Dr. Parkes has also served on a number of inter-ministerial committees, including the Values and Ethics and the Public Sector Transformation Sub-Committees of the Permanent Secretaries Board, the Public Sector Transformation Committee, the Whole of Government HR strategy Committee, the Advisory Board of the Management Institute for National Development, the CXC National Committee, and the Caribbean Leadership Project Action Research Round Table.
She is a graduate of the University of the West Indies, where she earned the M.Sc. in Human Resource Development with Distinction, and of the first cohort of the Caribbean Leadership Project. In 2007, she was awarded the Commonwealth Scholarship tenable in New Zealand, where she completed her doctoral studies in Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations at the Victoria University of Wellington. She is also a published researcher, and included in her publications are the “State of Industrial Relations in the Jamaican Public Sector”, commissioned by the Inter-American Development Bank, and “Gender: The Not-So-Hidden Issue in Language Arts Materials Used in Jamaica” in Caribbean Journal of Education, Vol. 17, No. 2, September 1995, along with numerous conference papers on public sector reform, HR, and vocational education and training.
She has lectured in the field of HR and Public Sector Management for the past 17 years, at the post graduate levels at the Management Institute for National Development, and the University College of the Caribbean, and have presented and facilitated numerous workshops and conferences across the Caribbean and in Australasia. She is also an Executive Coach, and currently serves as Lead Coach with the Government of Antigua and Barbuda Senior Leadership and Management Development Programme.