Director of Standards at BSJ Gets Badge of Honour for Meritorious Service

Hailing from a small farming community in St. Andrew East Rural, Julia Bonner Douett always knew that her passion would, one day, lead to much success.

The current Director of Standards at the Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ), Mrs. Bonner Douett will grace the stage at the National Honours and Awards Ceremony, on October 16, to be pinned with a Badge of Honour for Meritorious Service for her contribution in the field of standardisation at the Bureau.

Mrs. Bonner Douett tells JIS News that she feels “very blessed” to receive the honour from her country.

Her current success, she says, is as a result of her humble upbringing in the cool hills of Dallas Castle, which has “set the base for who I am in life”.

Seeing her parents actively involved in the community made it easy for Mrs. Bonner Douett to develop an interest in her community and the country at large.

That passion grew further when she transitioned from the Wolmer’s High School for Girls to the University of the West Indies (UWI), where she did her first degree in both Physics and Chemistry.

“I think I’m naturally good at analytical and mathematically oriented things, so I was pulled towards Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. I [also] like the idea of things adding up and making sense, so it was a natural thing for me to do Physics and Chemistry,” she tells JIS News.

Additionally, she shares that “in my community, I always see farmers and entrepreneurs and wondered how their businesses grew, so I [also] had that interest in business and business matters and I try to couple them with the sciences”.

As for her master’s degree in business administration, which she attained from the Northern Caribbean University, Mrs. Bonner Douett tells JIS News that after landing a supervisory role at a prominent company, “I realised that I did not know enough about the role and handling of corporate affairs, and if I were to progress in that field, I had to understand business and understand how this corporate structure works”.

Her first encounter with the BSJ was after she decided to leave the manufacturing sector to get a better understanding of quality management and what it entails.

“In terms of quality, standards and testing, there was a gap, in my head, between how we implement standards,” she says, noting, for example, that “at the time [working in the manufacturing sector] we were doing quality management and I was wondering how that applied to service”.

“I wanted to get that experience, so I actually moved from manufacturing to the Bureau of Standards because I wanted to understand quality management,” the Director says.

Mrs. Bonner Douett was first employed to the Bureau as a Standards Officer and Inspector, not long before leaving to pursue her interest in project management.

After that pursuit had ended, she returned to the BSJ as the Director of Standards, a position which she currently holds.

Over the years, she has inspired the development and introduction of various programmes at the BSJ, such as their Client Servicing Programme, the Business Partnership Programme, and the Quality Jamaica project, which later established the National Certification Body of Jamaica (NCBJ), among other things.

The Director was also involved in the establishment of two new units, the Regional and International Trade Office and the Technical Regulations Unit at the agency.

Other notable achievements included developing the first standardisation module in an academic programme towards a master’s degree in Jamaica; the Master’s in Integrated Rural Development at the University of Technology as well as sitting on several Academic Boards.

In 2022, Mrs. Bonner Douett was elected Chair of the International Organization for Standardization Committee for more than 120 Developing Countries (ISO DEVCO) worldwide.

On this achievement, she says: “I wasn’t aggressively going for it until I realised that it aligns with my passion for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and trade between countries.

“It’s about developing countries, and Jamaica being a developing country, I realised that it is exactly in line with what I do… and I was very happy when I was elected,” the Director says.

“I have to thank my staff at the Bureau, the Standards Division, my Executive Director, the Board and our Portfolio Minister for even considering me and approving my application. Without that kind of support, I couldn’t apply and even if I applied, I couldn’t do the work if they weren’t supporting me,” she tells JIS News.

At the end of her tenure come 2024, the Director of Standards hopes to remain part of the “big discussions”, thereby continuing to play her part in supporting various countries and communities to grow MSMEs.

Prior to this achievement, in 2017 Mrs. Bonner Douett was elected to the 15-member Technical Management Board (TMB) of the ISO (2018-2020), which guides the technical work of ISO Committees at the international level. She is also the first female official in the English-speaking Caribbean to assume this role.

As she continues to navigate her career, she encourages persons to “find your passion… approach it in a very aggressive and deliberate manner and continue to follow what is true to you and you will get there”.

“Growing up I never imagined myself in this, so what I want people to take from this is no matter where you are coming from and what you are doing, be true to what you are passionate about. Be principled and work hard. Do not expect to get paid every time you do something. Sometimes you must lay the groundwork for what will come your way, then you’ll get the rewards and you’ll be satisfied,” she adds.