Dr. Jodie Roure, who is bilingual in English and Spanish, is the President & CEO, Hurricane Maria Assistance & Relief Institutional Alliance, Inc. (H-MARIA). For the past 25 years, she has led human rights and humanitarian efforts stemming from diversifying the legal profession to providing post-natural disaster support and relief to ravished areas in the US, Latin American, and the Caribbean. She has expanded these efforts to diversify the medical profession and create access to health care for the most vulnerable.
Post-Hurricane Maria, Dr. Roure led, organized, and founded, with the support of Fellows of the American College of Surgeons, the Hurricane Maria Assistance & Relief Institutional Alliance, Inc., a 501c3. She serves as its President. HMARIA was formed for the charitable purpose of aiding persons who are victims of natural disasters and provides critical support and resources to minority and underrepresented populations. In an effort to disrupt poverty and create the next generation of leaders in our global society’s most impacted sectors, HMARIA focuses its efforts on increasing access to educational and developmental opportunities for a diverse population of aspiring doctors and lawyers. Dr. Roure’s efforts have expanded to the creation of the first free domestic surgical program for the American College of Surgeons in the United States called Operation Giving Back Puerto Rico.
Dr. Roure directs multiple Diversity in Law and Medicine Pipeline programs with numerous law schools and medical schools across the United States and its territory of Puerto Rico to diversify the legal and medical profession. For over two decades, participants have been provided year-long law school preparation and application support. Dr. Roure has helped secure the admissions and matriculation of hundreds of low-income, first generation, diverse and underrepresented candidates into law, graduate, and medical school with millions of dollars in combined scholarships yearly. These programs are for persons interested in or who are currently pursuing a career in law and medicine. Dr. Roure conducts extensive research on diversity pipeline education, race, class, ethnicity, and gender in the United States with a global comparative perspective to eradicate poverty globally.
Dr. Roure’s related work has been featured on Telemundo, CNN, CNN Español, PBS, Eyewitness News NYC, VICE, Brut Media, Wechester12news, Fox5, and many other media channels as an expert for her work on domestic violence in Brasil, efforts in Puerto Rico, and on Diversity Pipeline Education, and other human rights work.
Dr. Roure has served as a Special End Mass Incarceration Campaign Fellow with the American Civil Liberties Union. She regularly presents at the United Nations. She was a Scholar in Residence at the Inter American University School of Law, Puerto Rico, from 2012-2013, where she taught and worked with the Puerto Rico Judicial System on a study of the processing of domestic violence cases. During this time, she also co-taught at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. Dr. Roure is also an Associate Professor, Founder, Project Investigator, Director of the Rising Scholars of Justice Pipeline Program, and Director of the University of Houston Law Center Pre-law Pipeline Program at John Jay College, where she has taught since 2000. She teaches in the areas of domestic violence/gender rights, criminal justice, international human rights, international criminal justice, race, class and ethnicity in the United States, and Latina/o Studies.
Dr. Roure has conducted extensive human rights research on violence against women and gender-based violence and serves as an expert witness and global government consultant in this area. Her research focuses on issues of violence against women and girls in Brasil, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and the United States and comparative global studies. At the United Nations, her presentation highlights include the UN Commission on the Status Against Women 57, 59, and 61, 62, 63 as well as at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, moderating at the UN General Assembly 68 on State Responsibility for Eliminating Violence Against, and she has provided educational trainings at the UN International Criminal Court on the Approaches to Gender Based Prosecution and Prison Project Studies.
Dr. Roure is a published scholar who graduated from Douglass College, Rutgers University with a Bachelor of Arts in English and a minor in Spanish. She is a former United States Supreme Court intern hired by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1994. Dr. Roure obtained her Juris Doctor from Western New England University School of Law in Massachusetts and studied International Human Rights Law Protection in San Jose, Costa Rica at the University of Costa Rica Law School. Dr. Roure obtained her Ph.D. at the University at Buffalo-SUNY in Transnational Studies, formerly American Studies, majoring in Intercultural Studies and International Human Rights as an Arturo A. Schomburg Fellow.