The Honorable Alexis Herman has made her mark as one of the most accomplished women to ever emerge from Alabama. A social worker, politician, and entrepreneur, Herman now works as chair and CEO of New Ventures, LLC, a corporate consulting company, and serves on the boards of directors for several major companies. She also chairs the Diversity Advisory Board for the Toyota Motor Company.
Born in Mobile in 1947 to a schoolteacher mother and an entrepreneur/politician father, Herman saw the effects of Jim Crow firsthand. Her parents, who were devout Catholics, sent her to parochial schools that were still segregated at the time. As a girl, Herman witnessed the impact of segregation on her community, and this sparked a passion in her for social justice and activism. As a sophomore in high school, she questioned the archdiocese’s practice of excluding Black students from full participation in religious pageants and placing them at the rear of religious gatherings. This resulted in her suspension from school. However, she was readmitted when Black parents protested. More importantly, the ultimate result was the desegregation of the Mobile Parochial School System the following year.
After earning a degree in sociology from Xavier University of Louisiana in 1969, Herman devoted herself to social work, returning to Mobile to help desegregate public schools. She began her career as a social worker helping young men gain admittance to apprenticeships in the Pascagoula, Mississippi shipyard. Because of her passion and success in placing the first minority males in apprenticeship jobs, she was asked to move to Atlanta, GA to spearhead a similar effort. This effort established a ten-city program to recruit and place women of color into professional and managerial jobs in private industry. She helped place the first women of color into professional and technical jobs in companies that included General Motors, Delta Airlines, and Coca-Cola. This work gained her national recognition, and in 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed her, at age 29, to be the youngest director of the Women’s Bureau in the history of the U. S. Department of Labor.
At the end of the Carter administration in 1981, Sec. Herman founded A. M. Herman & Associates, a consulting firm that led to significant diversity and inclusion work with a number of companies, including Proctor & Gamble and AT&T. She remained a high-profile political figure and was eventually called to serve as Chief Executive Officer of the 1992 Democratic National Convention. After the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1992, she was appointed as the first African American woman Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison. In 1997, she again made history when she was sworn in as the first African American to be appointed and confirmed as Secretary of the U. S. Department of Labor.
During her tenure as Labor Secretary, unemployment reached a thirty-year low. Sec. Herman garnered praise for her efforts to institute effective child labor standards, her deft handling of the UPS worker’s strike of 1997, and her advocacy to increase the minimum wage. Her public service has supported five presidents of the United States, both Democrat and Republican.
Sec. Herman has been awarded more than 30 honorary doctorates and is an inductee into both the Minority Business Hall of Fame and the National Women’s History Project. Her non-profit work includes service on the boards of the National Urban League and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She is a former trustee for her alma mater, Xavier University, a current trustee of the Toyota Technological Institute at the University of Chicago, is on the board of the Bush-Clinton Presidential Leadership Scholars initiative, and chairs the Dorothy I. Height Educational Foundation, and the Advisory Board of her alma mater, Heart of Mary, in Mobile.
In 2000, Secretary Herman married the late Charles L. Franklin, a successful family physician in McLean, VA.
