CRANSTON – The RI Hospitality Association and RI Hospitality Education Foundation have announced that Chief Operating Officer Heather Singleton, a resident of Chepachet, has been appointed to the state of Rhode Island’s Board of Trustees on Career & Technical Education for a term set to expire on June 1, 2025.
The statewide focus on CTEs is the result of legislation introduced to the General Assembly by Rep. Joseph McNamara in 2014, intended to give higher priority to the field of learning, which proponents say is of vital importance to the state’s economic stability.
Singleton will serve on the 15-member Board of Trustees composed of the Secretary of Commerce, a member of the governor’s Workforce Training Board, nine members representing the private employment sector, and five members representing secondary and post-secondary educational institutions.
As the chief operating officer of the RIHA and the RIHEF, Singleton is responsible for establishing, implementing, and ensuring that the goals and objectives of the organizations are met. She also provides day-to-day staff management and oversees all operations including membership services, endorsed programs, educational partners, and training programs.
Singleton, whose resume includes more than 25 years of industry experience, currently serves on the board of directors for the International Society of Hotel Associations, the William M. Davies Jr. Career & Technical High School Board of Trustees, and on the Providence Cranston Workforce Investment Board as its vice-chair. She is also the vice-chair of the National Restaurant Association Certification Governing Committee.
Singleton has taught travel and tourism courses at the Community College of Rhode Island and Johnson & Wales University and has been featured on the 2007 Women of Influence list in New England Foodservice and by Providence Business News as a young business professional in its 2003 “Young Guns” article and again in 2005’s “40 Under Forty.”
Originally a native of upstate New York, Singleton earned a bachelor’s degree in international business from Johnson & Wales University and an MBA from the Alan Shawn Feinstein Graduate School at Johnson & Wales University. She has also earned the designation of IOM from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Organization Management program, and she is a certified personalysis facilitator. Personalysis is a study on individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
As a Board of Trustee member, Singleton will advise the Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Board of Education on the development of a biannual state plan for CTE and on policies the state should pursue to strengthen and modernize CTE, and establish, support, and expand private sector participation programs that enhance CTE at the local level. The board also provides financial oversight of all CTE investments, both federal and state, to ensure efficiency; takes control and management of state-owned and operated CTE schools, at the request of a local school committee or its equivalent, and takes control of other CTE schools as agreed to by local education districts; meets monthly to address how and to what degree career and technical education programs across the state prepare students to meet the current and future workforce needs of industry; sets the program industry standards that meet the needs of employers and prepare a future workforce that is ready to enter employment is Rhode Island; and more.
CTE is part of PrepareRI, a statewide initiative to build career pathways for all Rhode Island youth. Learn more about PrepareRI at: www.prepare-ri.org.
