Claudine Gay, the Daughter of Haitian Immigrants, is Harvard's First Black Woman President

Harvard University announced Claudine Gay as its 30th president—making her the first Black person and the second woman to lead the Ivy League school’s almost 400-year history. 

Photo Credit: Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

During the announcement, Gay called to mind her earlier years as a child of poor Haitian immigrant parents, “My parents are immigrants from Haiti. They came to the U.S. with very little and put themselves through college while raising our family… College was always the expectation for me. My parents believed that education opens every door.”

Gay first made history by being appointed as the first person of color and first woman to be the Edgergley Family Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2018. Prior to the Harvard faculty, she also taught political science at Stanford University, where she obtained her undergraduate degree in economics. 

In her remarks, Gay emphasized that with the strength and influence of the institution, more possibilities across the nation ought to be created. As she said, “There is an urgency for Harvard to be engaged with the world and to bring bold, brave, pioneering thinking to our greatest challenges.”

She continued to highlight the greater role of America’s oldest institution to the society at large, “When I imagine Harvard in the years ahead, I see a university that is even more connected to the world through our scholarship. The idea of the ivory tower  — that is the past, not the future, of academia. We don’t exist outside of society, but as part of it.”

Gay is set to officially assume the position next summer, July 1, 2023.

Cambridge Dictionary’s Definition of ‘Woman’ Now Includes Transgender Women

For the longest time, “An adult female human being” was the standard definition of ‘woman’ by Cambridge Dictionary. This denotes how women were solely described by their biological disposition. Yet, after careful study, the Cambridge Dictionary spokesperson expressed that the descriptors for the word ‘woman’ need to be updated.

In addition to the longtime definition, Cambridge Dictionary now defines ‘woman’ as, “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”  For the new entry’s usage, Cambridge provided examples such as, “She was the first trans woman elected to a national office,” and, “Mary is a woman who was assigned male at birth.”

The spokesperson elaborated that definitions go forward with time, “Our dictionaries are written for learners of English and are designed to help users understand English as it is currently used."

Along with this, Cambridge also expands its definition for the word ‘man’ that is now inclusive of transgender men having the descriptor, “an adult who lives and identifies as male though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.” The dictionary also provides new examples: “Mark is a trans man (= a man who was said to be female when they were born)” and “Their doctor encouraged them to live as a man for a while before undergoing surgical transition”.

Dictionary.com, who named ‘woman’ as its word of the year, points out the significance of descriptors provided to a word especially those that seem ambiguous and controversial. “This year, the search for the word woman on Dictionary.com spiked significantly multiple times in relation to separate high-profile events, including the moment when a question about the very definition of the word was posed on the national stage,” the online reference site elaborated.

This pertains to the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson where she was asked by Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn to “provide a definition for the word ‘woman’”. 

Global FWN100™ 2021 Lucy Reyes Pushes for Easier Credentialing Process for the Filipino Nurses in Canada

Lucy Reyes, President of Philippine Canadian Nurses Association and Global FWN100™ 2021 Awardee, has recently been recognized in an article published by CBC News for founding an organization that pushes for an easier process for International Educated Nurses (IENs) to have their credentials acknowledged in Canada.

Reyes identifies the systemic difficulty of becoming a nurse in Canada when one has been trained abroad. The process, as she says in the interview with CBC News, takes an average of four years for IENs to get accredited in Canada. This is apart from a demanding list of requirements that IENs must accomplish within a time period.

As she says, “The credentialing of internationally educated nurses needs a post-implementation review very badly in order to transform the process and make it more realistic to actually help with our manpower crunch across the country.”

Photo Credit: Philippine Canadian Nurses Association

The system has not changed since Reyes completed her nursing degree 46 years ago. She founded the Philippine Canadian Nurses Association, which has been actively calling out this systemic problem—and reaching out to help IENs experience fair labor opportunities in Canada.

"What I'm pushing for is … an opportunity for the provincial regulatory bodies to actually meet and develop common standards because we have the same recipients of care,” Reyes highlights.

Lucy has contributed more than four decades of progressive and diverse experience in acute and ambulatory settings as a frontline clinical manager, health informatics specialist, and as project management leader to several organizational initiatives. The Foundation for the Filipina Women’s Network conferred Reyes the Most Influential Filipina Woman in the World Award (Global FWN100™) Innovators & Thought Leaders category, at the Global Filipina Leadership Summit in San Francisco in 2021