Nancy Mclean...The woman in charge

NANCY JUNE Veronica McLean has contributed to Jamaica's Tourist Industry for the past thirty-three (33) years and is going from strength to strength.

RICARDO MAKYN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER National Honour awardee Nancy McLean accepts her award from Governor-General, Sir Howard Cooke, at King's House on National Heroes Day, on Monday, October 17.

A graduate of St. Hugh's High School, she studied hotel management at the Carl Duisberg Society in Cologne, Germany, where she became fluent in German.

She went on to complete various advanced courses in Tourism related subjects in Europe and the United States of America, later earning her Master's degree in tourism and hospitality management from the University of the West Indies.

INTRODUCED WINE, FOOD FESTIVALS

Nancy McLean holds the positions of both hotel manager and food and beverage manager of the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, where she is the first woman to have been appointed hotel manager in the 30-year history of the hotel. She has introduced to the hotel scene, the annual wine and food festivals and wedding expositions, sold out Jazz in the Gardens and International Cuisine nights. She has been the person in charge of hosting numerous very important persons, not least among them - Her Majesty the Queen and the Pope, on their visits to Jamaica.

PROFESSIONAL JUDGE

As if this were not enough, she is an acclaimed designer of festival and carnival costumes, who now acts as a judge ofvarious competitions, a professional judge in Jamaica's Culinary Arts Competition. She is also a Maitre Rotisseur Traiteur of the Confrerie de la Chaine de Rotisseurs, chairman of the HCIMA Jamaican Chapter and is an active member of the Kingston Parish Church.

The many awards for and acknowledgements of her outstanding service both locally and internationally, are a testament to the achievements of this giant in the tourism Industry.

Nancy McLean has indeed proven in an area of endeavour formerly overwhelmingly occupied by men, that she is more than equal to the task and will continue to bring to the industry, a unique creativity coupled with an apparently unlimited ability to achieve her goals and the goals of the nation.