Boyz II Men sing “It’s so hard to say goodbye” but that is not the case for Mrs. Rosa Burks Batiste as she leaves the Forest WIN Job Center after 25 years of long days and long drives to and from work as she supervised the work not only in Forest but Meridian, Philadelphia, Choctaw and the now closed Carthage, Newton and Morton Employment Centers.
She began with the agency in June of 1999 as an ES Interviewer at the front desk in Forest and later became the manager in Carthage and then the First African-American Manager of the Forest WIN Job Center office.
Rosa was a graduate of the first leadership class of Mississippi Department of Employment Security in June 2008.
In 2019, when promoted to Division Director, she became responsible for the overall operation of six WIN Job Center offices and sixteen employees. The Division Director position was re-classified to Employment Specialist III and that is the job that she left May 31.
The Conference Room of the Forest WIN Job Center was filled to capacity on Tuesday, May 30 at noon as MDES state employees, local and former employees, family, friends, city and state officials and company representatives gathered for lunch and to give Rosa roses for 25 years of dedicated service to the state and East Central Mississippi.
Participants included Robin Stewart, Robert Freeman, Connie Valentine, Constance Harvey, Tom Miles, Jackie Bradford, Mayor Nancy Chambers, Mayor Gerald Keeton, Nicholas Evans, Tonya Minor, Daphne James, Aaron Akers, representatives from Koch Food, Tyson Food, Central Electric, East Central Community College, Rhonda Kelley, Rev. Larry Odom, Mattye Evans, and Ayanna Batiste Butler.
