Leadership
Learn about ETP’s leadership team, bios and more information is available below.
Jessica Grimes
Executive Director
Jessica Grimes was appointed by Governor Newsom as the Executive Director in November 2023. Prior to her appointment, she served as the Regional Chair of the Central Valley Mother Lode Regional Consortium (CVML) and as the Associate Vice Chancellor of Career Education and Workforce Development at the Kern Community College District. Instrumental in strengthening and developing intersegmental partnerships among industry, K12 Local Education Agencies (LEAs), Workforce Development Agencies, and community-based organizations, Dr. Grimes oversaw a number of workforce and career education initiatives, including the Strong Workforce and the K12 Strong Workforce Programs, career education grants that serve K-16 students from diverse backgrounds. Additionally, she served on the Kern Coalition, a five-entity partnership, that functioned as the regional convener for California Jobs First, formerly CERF, to advance inclusive, economic development in Kern County. Before working on regional initiatives, Grimes deepened her workforce development experience as a Dean of Instruction and CTE at Taft College. Grimes earned her PhD from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Literature and Criticism and a Master’s degree in Religion and the Arts from Yale Divinity School.
Peter Cooper
Assistant Director/Senior Advisor
Peter Cooper was appointed as Assistant Executive Director by Governor Brown in 2012 and reappointed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2020. He has thirty years of experience working on labor, workforce and environmental policy at the international, national, state, and local levels. He served both as Senior Workforce Program Manager and as Legislative Advocate at the California Labor Federation from 2000 to 2012 and has worked for the Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO, and Public Citizen in Washington, DC. He earned a Master of Arts degree in International Affairs from Sacramento State University, holds two Bachelor of Arts degrees from CSU, Chico, and studied at Eberhard-Karls Universitaet, Tuebingen, Germany.
Kumani Armstrong
Assistant Director/Chief Counsel
Kumani Armstrong was appointed by Governor Newsom as the Assistant Director/Chief Counsel in July 2024. Prior to his appointment he served as Special Counsel for the Office of the Director at the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) since 2009. He managed various rulemaking and policy initiatives and coordinated with stakeholders and the Labor and Workforce Development Agency for approval and implementation of rulemaking actions. Prior to DIR, he worked in commercial litigation. He served as a Law Clerk for the Honorable Oliver W. Wanger at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California from 2000 to 2001. Armstrong was a Staff Attorney at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1999 to 2000. Armstrong earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Tara Armstrong
Deputy Director of Technical Branch/CIO
Tara Armstrong has been working at the Employment Training Panel, supporting its mission, since 2007 and is the ETP, Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Deputy Director of the Technical Operation Branch. Click here to read the full bio.