Photo: Brandon Moreland
Rowe's parents, Jamaican immigrants, instilled in her the importance of education. Today, she's the first Black woman to serve on Florida International University's board of trustees. "As the child of immigrants, education is really a vehicle for social and economic movement," she says.
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Rising Executives: Ones to Watch
Courting Success
CHANEL T. ROWE
Senior Counsel, Global Legal Organization,
Johnson & Johnson, Miami
Chanel T. Rowe is the high achiever you remember from high school — she was in the pre-law magnet program, worked in retail, was a varsity cheerleader for the Flying L’s of Fort Lauderdale High and graduated a year early. She just never slowed down.
Not at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where she graduated summa cum laude in economics and tutored in math while also holding a real estate license and doing title and other administrative work for a real estate firm.
Nor in law school at Florida International University in Miami-Dade, where she was on the Law Review, Moot Court (she won the competition and received best orator award), won the Florida Supreme Court Justice R. Fred Lewis Scholarship for Professionalism, was a student ambassador, a mentor and an officer in the Black Law Student Association, the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Bar Association and women lawyers society. “I was a very active student to say the least,” Rowe says. “How I did all that and managed to graduate valedictorian is really by the grace of God.”
Rowe has had such a presence as an FIU alum that the state Board of Governors appointed her to the university’s board of trustees, making her FIU’s first Black woman trustee and, currently, the only Black trustee. She chairs the FIU trustee board’s audit and compliance committe. “I believe in the public university system of Florida,” she says. “As a child of immigrants, education is really a vehicle for social and economic movement.”
The daughter of Jamaican immigrants who impressed on her the “importance and opportunity of education,” Rowe came with them to Florida from New York just before she turned 9.
Since law school, she has worked at two Am- Law 100 firms, served as judicial law clerk to Senior U.S. District Judge Donald L. Graham in Miami, served as enforcement counsel for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission office in Miami, was general counsel and a partner at a fintech broker-dealer and founded and was managing partner of her own firm, Uriel Law.
At present, she’s a senior counsel at Johnson & Johnson, where she focuses on litigation policy initiatives and litigation risk management. “With the ever-increasing amount of litigation companies face today, it is more important than ever to develop agile and proactive cross-functional teams to address litigation risk,” she says. “I have always wanted to be an in-house advisor to a global entity.”
She’s been active on Florida Bar committees on diversity and inclusion, grievance, and student education and admission to the Bar. She’s past chair of the Miami-Dade chapter of the Florida Association of Women Lawyers’ mentoring committee. She’s a graduate of the Bar’s Wm. Reece Smith Jr. Leadership Academy. She mentors law students and young professionals and is writing a self-help book outlining the strategies she’s used for personal and professional development. The Miami-Dade Bar in 2023 put her on its Top 40 Under 40 list. The rating service Super Lawyers named her a “rising star” twice. American Lawyer magazine put her on its “Trailblazer” list and the National Black Lawyers professional development and networking association listed her on its Top 40 Under 40.
This year, she founded the Trustee Chanel T. Rowe Scholarship at the FIU College of Law for needy, high-performing law students from a single-parent home or a first-generation college graduate. The scholarship brings a $5,000 stipend to intern with a federal or state court judge for a semester. Rowe says interning with the 4th District Court of Appeal chief judge while in law school “was the most defining experience of my legal career. Unfortunately, law students are not paid when they intern with a judge. As a result, some of the brightest young minds who are financially disadvantaged simply cannot afford to consider the opportunity.”
Rowe credits her success to her upbringing, a sense of how far she’s come and to mentors. “My guiding lights are my faith, exercise, some good music and stillness,” she says, “something that grounds me regardless of the chaos.”
