AVA PARKER
PRESIDENT, PALM BEACH STATE COLLEGE, WEST PALM BEACH
After law school, Parker started her career as an assistant public defender in Miami-Dade. She later worked as assistant general counsel for the state transportation department. She has extensive experience throughout the state’s higher-ed system, serving on UCF’s board, on the state’s Board of Governors for 10 years, and then overseeing the launch of Florida Polytechnic University as executive vice president and COO. She became Palm Beach State’s president in 2015 and oversaw the completion of the college’s fifth campus in Loxahatchee Groves. The fourth-largest institution in the state college system, Palm Beach is majority minority, has nearly 49,000 students and offers more than 130 programs. “It’s our job to show students their path to ‘you can’ when they’re perhaps not sure they can,” she says.
| EDUCATION | University of Florida (BA, JD) |
| CIVIC CONTRIBUTION | The means that we have provided our community to retool and bounce back after the pandemic. Students could select from a list of over 24 programs that specifically respond to industry demands in the county. |
| SOMETHING SURPRISING | I like to sing and have a pretty good alto/tenor voice. |
| NEW HOBBY | I have a new-found interest in national parks. I am determined to make it to Mount Rushmore this summer! |
| ADMIRES | NextEra Energy because of the way that the company is stretching itself to think beyond its primary business lines. I am impressed with the interest in renewables and the understanding of the difference that it is going to make in the future. |
| READING | Mindset, by Carol S. Dweck |