Typically, the debates on economic advancement in this ‘globalized’ economy, particularly for small states, are steered towards the robustness of monetary and fiscal policies and other related macroeconomic measures. Without doubt those are essential ingredients, but this paper seeks to draw close attention to an often taken-for-granted, but equally fundamental driver of economic progress. That is the aggregate capabilities of a nation’s human resources or its skills base in support of the viewpoint that ‘the wealth of nations is increasingly based on the skills and knowledge of their workforce’ (ILO 2003, 10). This paper therefore seeks to advance the proposition that strategic human capital development, resulting from carefully designed education and training systems, is a key ingredient to building the kind of socioeconomic resilience that has been achieved by some small nation states, and is desired by others, (particularly in our CARICOM region), and which sometimes seems elusive.