American Chamber of Commerce of Jamaica CEO Gail Abrahams has been selected as the island’s representative for the 2017-2018 International Women’s Forum (IWF) Leadership Foundation Fellows Programme.

The IWF Leadership Foundation said Abrahams was chosen from a highly competitive global pool of over 80 candidates, and described her as “a woman with enormous talent, promise and potential” who will make a wonderful addition to the class.

The 2017-2018 Fellows Class comprises 36 women leaders spanning the corporate, government, non-profit, and academic sectors who hail from 14 nations — Australia, Bermuda, Canada, China, Ecuador, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, The Netherlands, Turkey and the United States.

The year-long programme begins in Houston this October with orientation and training followed by participation in the IWF Global Leadership Conference. Subsequently the class will be exposed to executive education training at Harvard Business School in Massachusetts and INSEAD Business School in Fontainebleau, France, next year. In addition, a specially selected mentor, a leader in her field, is assigned to work with and promote the development of each Fellow for the duration of the programme.

“This unique programme has nurtured business innovation, leadership and mentorship in women across the world continuously since 1994 by recruiting and supporting outstanding women with high potential leadership skills across careers, cultures and continents,” the IWF Leadership Foundation said in a news release.

“Through its unprecedented global membership of over 6,000 women leaders in 33 nations, IWF connects the world’s most pre-eminent women of significant and diverse achievement, in order to build better leadership for a changing world,“ the release added.

“Gail impressed the selectors as a future leader with enormous potential whose further development would accord with the IWF mandate of building better leadership for a changing world. We are very proud of her and know that she will represent Jamaica well,” the release quotes IWF Jamaica President Camille Facey.

Abrahams is a communications professional with over 15 years’ experience in the public and private sectors where she held senior positions at GraceKennedy, FLOW and First Global Bank. Earlier this year she was appointed chair of the Jamaica Information Service advisory board and a director of the board of JPS Foundation.

Abrahams holds an MBA in Banking and Finance from Manchester Business School and a Bachelor of Arts in English from The University of the West Indies. She also holds a diploma in public relations and certificates in voice training and radio news and current affairs production for Caribbean broadcasters from the University of the West Indies and the United States Information Service, respectively.