Mrs. Maria Padilla-Benjamin, has 22 years working experience in Human Resource Development, fifteen (15) of which has been within the Trade environment. She has a passion for learning and influencing individuals to acquire the knowledge, information and/or attitudes necessary for the achievement of individual as well as organizational goals and objectives.
At exporTT, Mrs. Padilla-Benjamin held the position of Manager Training for 15 years where she worked along with a team of professionals to provide relevant training and development initiatives focused on building the capacity of Trinidad and Tobago Exporters to master the essentials of an effective export strategy. Other roles she performed include: Ag. Marketing and New Media Manager / Manager Communications; Project Manager Export Development Forum in 2013, exporTT’s premier Inward Buyers Missions dubbed “InBuyTT” in 2014 and 2015 as well as other smaller scale projects like the Official Visit to Trinidad and Tobago of the Vice Minister Trade and Foreign Investment of Cuba.
In June 2021, Mrs. Padilla-Benjamin was appointed exporTT’s Implementation Lead for the Export Booster Initiative (EBI) for the manufacturing sector designed to develop three broad strategic areas namely: Export Promotion, Capacity Building and Institutional Strengthening. The primary objective of the EBI is to increase the value of manufacturing exports by 10% at the end of the fiscal year 2020/2021 and to double that by 2024 to approximately TT$5.4 billion.
More recently she was confirmed in the position of General Manager – Operations effective March 2022. Maria remains committed to making exporTT known and assisting in driving the mandate of the organization. She holds a BSc in Management Studies (Hons) from the University of the West Indies and a MBA in General Management from Henley Management College (University of Reading).