Jessica Grimes, PhD, was appointed by Governor Newsom as the Executive Director of the California Employment Training Panel (ETP) in November 2023. ETP is a department within the Labor Workforce Development Agency (LWDA) that supports and partners with businesses to create and retain jobs through employment training. Since its establishment in the early eighties, ETP has advanced its mission by investing over $2 billion into 102,000 businesses to train and retain 1.6 million workers in the state of California.
Prior to her appointment, she served as the Associate Vice Chancellor of Career Education and Workforce Development at the Kern Community College District and as the Regional Chair of the Central Valley Mother Lode Regional Consortium (CVML). Additionally, she co-led the Kern Coalition, a five-entity partnership that functions as the regional convener for California Jobs First, formerly CERF. Prior to her roles at KCCD, she was an English professor and the Dean of Instruction and CTE at Taft College.
Grimes prioritizes equitable, economic and workforce development in her leadership roles. She is deeply committed to promoting opportunities for all to address the needs of diverse communities. Her years of lived experience and ongoing connections to disinvested families and communities have inspired her to be a driver for tangible and sustainable, social change.
Grimes invests significant time in building up her community and serves on the boards of United Way of Central Eastern California, Adventist Health of Kern County, the Kegley Institute of Ethics at the California State University of Bakersfield (CSUB), and the Bakersfield Museum of Art. She served on Governor Newsom’s Career Education Master Plan and is also a member of CSUB’s President’s Community Ambassadors.