Founder: Shireen K. Lewis, J.D., Ph.D.

Shireen K. Lewis, J.D., Ph.D.
Executive Director of EduSeed and Founder of SisterMentors

Photo by Molly Roberts

Dr. Shireen Lewis is the Founder of SisterMentors and the Executive Director of EduSeed®. She has devoted over 20 years to coaching and mentoring women and girls. In April 2005, Dr. Lewis was honored as a Distinguished Alumnae for her outstanding contribution to the education and mentoring of women and girls of color. In honoring Dr. Lewis, the Dean of Douglass College and the Douglass Associate Alumnae identified her as a role model for future generations of women. In December 2005, she received The Honorable Annice M. Wagner Pioneer Award from the Bar Association of the District of Columbia for her work with SisterMentors. In 1989, she received an award from the National Association of Women Lawyers for her work on behalf of women law students.

Dr. Lewis has mentored women in college, encouraging them to pursue graduate and professional school. She was Dean and teacher of a high school for girls in Trinidad and Tobago. She helps raise funds for the first school in a village in Tibet which promotes education among girls. She has served on the board of several community organizations that promote education and equity for women and girls. She is past Co-President of the Washington, D.C. branch of the American Association of University Women.

Dr. Lewis is a columnist and writer for the Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine. Her scholarship and teaching are in Francophone West African and Caribbean literature and theory. Her newly released book entitled, Race, Culture and Identity: Francophone West African and Caribbean Literature and Theory From Négritude to Créolité (Lexington Books, 2006), is the first comprehensive study of the relationship between Négritude, Antillanité and Créolité. Her book interrogates black identity as theorized by black Francophone intellectuals like Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Patrick Chamoiseau. Her most recent article, "Gendering Négritude: Paulette Nardal and the Birth of Modern Black Francophone Literature" (Romance Languages Annual, 1999), positions black Francophone women as intellectual contributors to the birth of the Négritude movement.

Dr. Lewis has taught at several universities, including as Visiting Professor at The University of Virginia. She has presented her scholarship both in the United States and abroad and has been interviewed by Radio Haïti, located in Port-au-Prince, about her work on Paulette Nardal. She is a member of the Modern Language Association.

Dr. Lewis received her Ph.D. in French Literature in 1998 from Duke University and her J.D. from The University of Virginia School of Law in 1989. She obtained her B.A. in 1986 in French and Spanish from Douglass College, a women's college at Rutgers University, where she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society in her Junior year.

She practised law as a litigator with a New York City law firm and is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and the State of New York and is a member of the American, District of Columbia and New York Bar Associations.

Dr. Lewis is fluent in French and Spanish and has reading ability in Continental Portuguese. She was born and raised in Pepper Village, Fyzabad, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies; has lived in Senegal, West Africa; and Paris and Tours, France. She has traveled to Tibet and China and countries in West Africa, Western Europe, and the Caribbean.

Dr. Lewis has been featured on television including MHz Networks and DCTV and in various magazines including Ms. magazine and DIVAS, published in Paris, France.

Dr. Lewis practices yoga and meditation every day and is a frequent visitor to Satchidananda Ashram ---Yogaville in Buckingham, Virginia. She is also vegan vegetarian.