Dotie Joseph

Dotie Joseph was born in Haiti, and raised in Miami. She has a proven passion for human and civil rights advocacy. Ms. Joseph earned a B.A. in Political Science from Yale University, where she co-founded Yale’s Haitian Student Alliance and served as the Political Action Chairperson of the Yale N.A.A.C.P. She also studied post-colonial relations between France and Africa at Columbia University in Paris, France; and conflict resolution at the Institute for International Mediation and Conflict Resolution in The Hague, Netherlands. She also served as the Legislative Correspondent for U.S. Representative Peter Deutsch during college.

After Yale, Ms. Joseph served as a Research Intern in the Democracy Program of the Carter Center, where she focused on activities in West Africa and the Caribbean; and as the Acting Youth Director for Eglise Beraca in Miami.

Driven by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s quote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Ms. Joseph went on to earn a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center. There, Ms. Joseph interned with the Voting Rights Project of the national Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, externed with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice where she focused on protecting the rights of individuals with limited English proficiency, and served as the 2003 Frankel Fellow for Human Rights First where she worked on issues related to US-Haiti immigration policy and political asylum.

Beyond U.S. borders, Ms. Joseph worked with Congolese and Somali refugees at the Refugee Law Project in Uganda, and helped resettle over one hundred Sudanese refugees while interning with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Egypt.

Currently, Ms. Joseph is serving is the President of the Haitian Lawyers Association, as Deputy City Attorney for the City of North Miami Beach. Previously, Ms. Joseph served as the Judicial Law Clerk to the Honorable Judge Eugene Hamilton, as a Civil Rights Litigation Consultant, as an Associate with several law firms, and as the owner of her own law firm.

Her credo is to live out the tenets espoused in Psalm 82:3 and Isaiah 1:17 (We are called to defend the cause of the oppressed, to seek justice, and to correct the oppressor).