Founder, Global Minds, LLC; Model UN Coordinator, Bells Mill Elementary School
Audré is honored to be an UNA-NCA board member. Audré attended Boston University School of Law with a focus on international law with the intention of addressing global humanitarian violations, especially those affecting children. Prior to law school, Audré spent her undergraduate years as an active Guardian Ad Litem Volunteer, a legal advocate for children in foster homes. She completed a second B.A. degree in French at the Université d’Angers in France. The year before attending law school, Audré became a full-time teacher at a public high school where she was impacted by both the monumental challenges teachers had to reach students of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds as well as the students’ unlimited potential to learn. This experience followed Audré to law school where she also tutored students in under-served schools. After graduating from law school in 2001, Audré entered into the fields of family law and immigration law, with a focus on political asylum cases. In 2015, when seeking a Model UN program for her daughters, Audré discovered UNA-NCA’s Model UN program - offered by Global Classrooms DC. Audré was drawn to the idea of giving students an opportunity to engage in global issues by organizing and teaching the program as a parent volunteer. Managing school Model UN programs has involved weekly engagement with students, allowing her to see, first-hand, how students become aware of the vital work that the UN is doing. Audré’s involvement has also given her intimate insight into the challenges that teachers face when asked to head worthy extracurricular programs such as Model UN. Audré grappled with the reality that many teachers just can’t carve out the time needed to head Model UN programs. In response, in 2021, Audré founded Global Minds, a Model UN administrative company whose mission is to provide viable programming for schools who need instructors.
Vision Statement:
UNA-NCA plays a vital role in educating our local community about the crucial work done by the United Nations and how critical US involvement is to maintaining global stability. Now, more than ever, we are challenged to strengthen US support of political peacekeeping, policy development, and humanitarian efforts developed by the UN. The heartbeat of the US-UN relationship is global citizenship; a mindset that we must continue to strive for equitable human rights across the globe, to end conflicts, and protect our planet’s environment. In areas where the UN needs to improve its response to these challenges, UNA-NCA must strive to encourage deeper engagement to affect internal change, as opposed to disengagement which removes the US from the global table. The core of being human is the capacity to care about one another. Understanding global issues, particularly those at the root of conflict, poverty, and inequality, are critical to the prosperity of future generations, generations that will also look beyond themselves and respond accordingly.
