Gema G. Hernández was born in Havana, Cuba, and she came to the United States in 1961 as part of what we know now as Operation Pedro Pan, a rescue mission under the direction of the Archdiocese of Miami designed to bring 11,000 unaccompanied Cuban children to this country. Gema was one of those children whose parents were left behind in Cuba. She had to wait six years to be reunited with her parents, later in 1967. This trip to the United States sponsored by the Catholic Church was originally going to be for three months, but instead it became a life long journey that has taken her from being an unaccompanied parolee minor, a political refugee, to Office of the Secretary of the State of Florida Department of Elder Affairs and to a successful consultant and professor.

Gema has been breaking the traditional Hispanic women mold for years. As far back as 1972, Gema Hernández and her husband Luis Hernández were the first married couple to march together at the University of Florida graduation ceremonies for their respective bachelor’s degrees. They did it again two years later at Louisiana State University where they received their respective master’s degrees on the same day. For a married woman and for a married Hispanic woman with one child to get her master’s degree with honors at the same time as her husband was unheard of in the 1970s. Even today it is a somewhat unusual experience. Getting a master’s degree was just the beginning. Mrs. Hernández went on and completed a doctorate in Public Administration years later while juggling a full time job and raising two children. During her university years, Gema was inducted into a number of honorary societies for her academic accomplishments: She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Sigma Iota, Sigma Delta Pi and Sigma Beta Delta honor societies.

As the years passed, Dr. Hernández became professionally involved in a variety of areas that brought her statewide and international recognition in the fields of alcohol abuse and alcoholism, cultural competence and gerontology. This recognition led to her appointment in 1995 as the first female and the first Hispanic to achieve the rank of full professor at Nova Southeastern University School of Business and Entrepreneurship. At that time she was the only woman teaching for the School of Business.

Her career is full of innovation and challenges. It could be said that she began helping women and culturally distinct groups in 1973 when she became the only bilingual vocational rehabilitation counselor assigned to the Goodwill Industries Workshop. In that capacity she began fighting for the needs and rights of Spanish-speaking parents of developmentally disabled adults. She was instrumental in adapting training materials and training protocols for those parents and children who only spoke Spanish. Her desires to help led her to attend a training program at the University of South Florida where she became a work evaluator. Because of her knowledge she was able to adjust, modify and incorporate cultural issues in the work evaluation program.

Whether she was the first Hispanic person to work in this category and to develop training programs for the Spanish speaking parents, we do not know, but we would not be surprised. It was also at this time when she began writing for the first Bilingual, bicultural television program called ¿Qué Pasa, USA? Which aired for many years in PBS stations around the country. Gema was one of a group of young writers who wanted to capture the challenges facing the Cuban Family as they raised their children in the new land. One of the episodes titled Juana goes to College received an award from the Latin American Association of writers, ¿Qué Pasa USA? is the predecessor of the popular show La Familia also in PBS.