Two Miami Dade College Board members who joined the body during Ron DeSantis’ first term are keeping their posts following a second round of reappointments the Governor just issued.
DeSantis’ Office announced the reappointment of Roberto Alonso and Marcell Felipe to the seven-member Board of Trustees. Both are subject to Senate approval.
Both voted alongside their Board peers in December to transfer more than 2.6 acres of prime downtown Miami land for Donald Trump’s planned presidential library.
Alonso, who won a seat on the Miami-Dade County School Board in 2022 with DeSantis’ support, is a repeat appointment of the Governor’s.
DeSantis first tapped him for the Miami Dade College Board of Trustees in July 2020. Three years later, the Governor named Alonso to the Miami-Dade Transportation Planning Organization, the county’s main mobility decision-making body.
The son of Cuban exiles and an executive in his family’s real estate business, Alonso previously worked for two years as Director of Partnerships and Solution Engineering at SchoolMint, a school choice and student enrollment software company.
Alonso, now the Board of Trustees Vice Chair, is also a past Chair of the Miami Lakes Public Safety Committee and former Vice Chair of the Miami Lakes Charter Review Committee. He earned an associate’s degree from Miami Dade College in 2002 and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Florida International University.
His state-level political committee, Better Values for Our Future, has received multiple donations from School Development HF Finance, a Miami company whose principal, Ignacio Zulueta, leads charter school giant Academica with his brother, Fernando, and sits on the Board of the Florida Charter School Alliance.
State records show Alonso donated $250 to DeSantis’ re-election campaign in 2022.
In February, he penned a guest column for Florida Politics calling for a transparent, Board-led process to select the Miami-Dade Public School District’s next Superintendent as Jose Dotres’ tenure winds down.
Felipe, a corporate lawyer and founding Chair of Inspire America Foundation, a super PAC that works to promote democracy in Cuba and the Americas, took his Miami Dade College Board of Trustees seat in 2019 alongside current Chair Michael Bileca and former member Carlos Migoya.
He also serves as Board Chair of the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora and previously worked as a broadcast industry executive.
Other roles include Board membership to the Miami-Dade Housing Finance Authority and several nonprofits.
Felipe, who was born in Cuba and arrived in the United States via Costa Rica in 1981, according to an interview he gave last year, graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
He also earned undergraduate degrees at Miami Dade College and Florida International University.
