Spring 2003
Volume 9, Issue 3

Graduation Speaker Rolanda Pierre-Dixon: Education Serves Her Life, Community

De Anza College will welcome Rolanda Pierre-Dixon as the keynote speaker for our 36th Annual Commencement on Saturday, June 28.

Pierre-Dixon is the team leader of the Domestic Violence Unit in the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. When she began working there in 1981, Pierre-Dixon already possessed a desire to change the system because of a childhood friend’s experience with domestic violence. She began her efforts to create a domestic violence unit when she was hired and realized her goal in 1990 by starting the first “vertical prosecution” unit in the District Attorney’s Office.

“Vertical prosecution refers to how we handle domestic violence cases from the beginning by keeping the same prosecutor from complaint through trial to sentencing,” Pierre-Dixon explained. “That way, victims don’t have to retell their stories to new prosecutors.”

She sees her team leader position as more than a job. “It’s an avocation. I’m determined to make a difference in the lives of men, women and children in my community. I firmly believe that everyone in a family is diminished when there is violence in the home,” she said.

Pierre-Dixon is one of four daughters raised by a single mother who knew that getting an education was key to achieving anything in this world. “I was 14 when I decided to become an attorney,” she said. “My mother always encouraged me in that effort. She raised us all to believe that life is not complete if you don’t give back to your community.”

She has tried to live her mother’s teaching through her legal work and by committing herself to educate the community at large. To that end, she makes more than 50 public presentations a year to students, law enforcement, lay associations and professional groups throughout California and numerous other states. Pierre-Dixon wants her community, her state and her country to know that life can and should be lived without violence. She has received numerous awards for her work but says she gets her greatest joy from battered women who tell her she has made a difference for the better in their lives and the lives of their children.

Pierre-Dixon graduated with a B.A. in political science from San Jose State University and earned her juris doctorate from the University of Santa Clara in 1980. She is happily married and has a 12-year-old daughter, Genavae.