Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez

Kristen Rosen Gonzalez is a proud single mother raising her children on Miami Beach. She was born and raised in South Florida, speaks Spanish and French fluently, and has a multi-cultural background reflecting the diversity of Florida. Immediately following her undergraduate career at Tufts University in Boston, MA where she studied both French and Spanish Literature, she moved back home to Miami Beach, FL, her hometown, worked as an internet journalist, and started a family. While raising her young children, she went back to school part-time and earned a Master’s Degree in Communication at Barry University in 2006.

Kristen is grateful for her education because when she divorced, she was immediately able to find a job as an English Teacher at Miami Central, an inner-city high school and one of the most challenged schools in the Miami-Dade County School District. This experience allowed Kristen to develop an in-depth understanding of the county’s K-12 educational system, and, after one-year, she was hired as a full-time faculty member at Miami Dade College, the nation’s largest community college.

For the past eight years at the college, (Associate) Professor Rosen Gonzalez has served on Miami Dade College’s Legislative Advocacy Committee and lobbied in Tallahassee, the Theodore Gibson Oratorical Competition Board, a speech contest in conjunction with Miami-Dade County Public Schools exploring the Black Diaspora, and Co-Chaired the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation Undergraduate Pathway’s Program to create clear and defined routes to earning student degrees.