Dean Michèle Alexandre featured in Florida Trend
Magazine profiles local women leaders
By Amy Martinez
Florida Trend
Oct. 25, 2019
Excerpt
As a young girl in Port-au- Prince, Michéle Alexandre experienced income inequality firsthand. “In Haiti, it’s 0.001% rich, and everyone else is struggling,” she says. Her working-class parents, who had migrated to Port-au-Prince from the countryside, emphasized education and studying hard. “My mom had a favorite saying: ‘Life doesn’t owe you anything.’ The reality in Haiti is it was cutthroat.”
At 11, Alexandre earned a scholarship to one of the city’s top Catholic schools — “We read Voltaire and studied Latin” — which set her up for later success at Colgate University, where in 1996 she was the first black valedictorian, and then as a law student at Harvard. Last summer, she became the first black dean at Stetson University College of Law.
This article was originally published in Florida Trend on Oct. 25, 2019, with the headline, “11 Florida women in leadership roles.”
Post date: Dec. 16, 2019
Media contact: Kate Bradshaw
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