The CEO of Grupo SID participated in the XXVIII Meeting of Leaders in the Agricultural Sector, where she raised the need to train professionals capable of learning, exercising sound judgment, and responding with a sense of urgency to challenges.
Punta Cana, Dominican Republic – The Dominican Republic’s ability to sustain its productive transformation and increase its competitiveness will depend, to a large extent, on the people it is able to train. But the challenge, warned Ligia Bonetti, CEO of Grupo SID, goes beyond preparing technicians with specific knowledge: it requires developing professionals with the capacity for continuous learning, sound judgment for decision-making, and a willingness to act.
Bonetti participated in the panel “Agribusiness and Trade in National Development: What are the Key Competencies of the Technical and Managerial Professional We Need?”, along with Mercedes Ramos, president of the Board of Grupo Ramos, within the framework of the XXVIII Meeting of Leaders in the Agricultural Sector.
During her presentation, she addressed one of the main challenges facing the manufacturing sector: the growing gap between the speed at which companies change and their capacity to train and adapt the talent they need.
For Bonetti, organizations can no longer focus solely on what a person knows at a given moment. Technical knowledge, she pointed out, has an increasingly shorter lifespan compared to the speed of change.
“I’m increasingly less interested in hiring only for knowledge. I’m interested in hiring for the ability to learn, sound judgment, and the will to act,” she stated.
The CEO of Grupo SID also emphasized that some of the most significant gaps facing the manufacturing sector are not exclusively technical. Concentration, attention to detail, the ability to prioritize, discipline, and consistency have become determining factors for operational performance.
“We have to rediscover the value of doing small things well,” she noted, referring to the importance of these skills in sectors such as agribusiness, manufacturing, and operations.
Bonetti also maintained that a significant gap persists between theory and practice. For this reason, he emphasized the need to expand dual training models, professional internships, and experiences that allow for early exposure to the realities of the working world.
“The great challenge is not only to train more people, but to train the people that the productive sector truly needs. Academia and business cannot operate at different speeds,” he stated.
At Grupo SID, this vision translates into a sustained investment in the development of its employees. In 2025 alone, the organization provided more than 98,000 hours of training in areas encompassing leadership, artificial intelligence, sustainability, and business acumen. Over the past five years, investment in training and development has exceeded RD$395 million.
Bonetti stressed that training should be understood as an investment, not an expense, particularly in an environment where companies cannot control all the changes that impact their operations, but they can decide how to prepare their teams to face them.
“We don’t need everyone to know everything; we need each person to understand how their actions impact the whole,” he expressed. From his perspective, understanding the relationship between the field, industry, operations, costs, and the consumer is fundamental to making better decisions and increasing productivity.
Bonetti called for strengthening collaboration between businesses, academia, and the government to anticipate the skills the labor market will demand and to align training with the realities of work.
