2025 Alumni Award Winner, Sherline Lexime, On Forging Her Own Unique Path

I’m standing up here because, if it weren’t for NAF, I wouldn’t be where I’m at in my career. 

Thinking back on my experience in the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism at Miami Beach Senior High School, one trip vividly comes to mind. It was our visit to Loew’s Miami Beach Hotel. We got to see the real work firsthand — we shadowed staff on their rounds, and worked at different stations around the hotel. Then members of the executive leadership team talked with us about their careers and shared encouraging words.

You know what I noticed about those talks? Wherever these leaders ended up, was never where they started. They had experience in many different departments and hotels.

The variety really stuck with me. By senior year, I had excelled in the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism — but I figured I would leave behind my focus on hospitality, and pursue accounting instead. That’s because, as I was growing up in the inner city of South Florida, in a strict Haitian household, my parents expected me to enter a math-focused field like medicine or engineering.

Luckily, the lead teacher for our hospitality program, Dr. Lupe Diaz, saw my potential and my interest in this field, and convinced me to keep considering hospitality. She encouraged me to apply for a scholarship to college. Thanks to NAF helping me develop Future-Ready Skills, I aced the scholarship interview — and earned a full ride to Johnson & Wales University.  

After college, that same variety that had so captured my attention as a student became part of my everyday life. I spent 13 years at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel, where I got to explore a wide range of departments. Eventually, I found my way to human resources, and it has been the perfect fit for me ever since. Today, having earned a Juris Masters degree in Employment Law from Florida State University, it is extremely rewarding to assist many individuals, including incoming students, with their hospitality careers. 

As the years have passed, I have noticed that no matter how far I get in my career, the evidence of NAF’s impact stays right in front of me. Many of my fellow NAF alumni also established themselves as leaders in Miami’s hospitality industry, like Roseline Bien-Aime and Julie Kennedy. And I am so impressed by the NAF students I get to meet when they visit my hotel for their own job shadow days. They are motivated and curious, with big dreams of forging their own unique paths.

This is one of the gifts that NAF gives us: The experiences, skill-building, and mentorship to dream big for our futures, and to build careers we can be proud of, no matter what field we choose. I love seeing the students of today take advantage of this gift — because for me, it has led to much happiness and success.

Thank you.