Hawthorne Mayor Jacquelyn Randall isn’t weighed down by the many hats she wears. As an educator, clinician, mayor and mother, she devotes her life to serving others and empowering female youth.
Her first outlet for service was the medical field, in which she earned a master's degree in health care administration from Saint Leo University in Tallahassee, and later worked as a professional respiratory therapist, bedside clinician and then a traveling clinician during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was a servant to the public before I became a public servant,” Randall, 38, said. “My profession definitely gave me the opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives who were afflicted with pain, afflicted with sickness, afflicted with grief.”
She then moved on to inspire students with similar passions for medicine as an adjunct clinical instructor at Santa Fe College. In this role, she aims to enrich students’ skills in not only health care but empathy, she said.
Randall’s pastor, the Rev. Eugene Herring, has known her since she was born and said he’s always marveled at her ambition and charisma as a young leader.
“For her age, she’s a very mature leader,” Herring said. “She’s probably the most outgoing and progressive young person in our community in terms of leadership.”
Immersed in medicine, education and politics, Randall said she didn’t think this was how she’d give back to her community — she was simply guided by the principles passed down by the influential women in her life, especially her grandmother.
She used to tell Randall: “Nobody wants to help somebody who’s not helping themselves” and to “not sit around and wait for pity or a handout.”
As a woman of color in the male-dominated field of politics, Randall established herself under that guidance, later taking on the position of mayor of her hometown, Hawthorne — something she never envisioned for herself.
It wasn’t until she joined a PTA for Hawthorne Middle School that she discovered a taste for public service. She was elected PTA vice president and found herself advocating for more than just education. Suddenly, she was working with city officials on everything from better health care to transportation.
Though her mother also served as mayor while Randall was in college, public service never piqued her interest, she said. But while her mother was in office, Randall saw how one woman could effect real change in her community.
When she would come home from college, she remembered being showered with adoration for her mother by those who felt her impact. She gleamed with admiration while watching her mother in the city parades, cheered on by the people she’d dedicated her life to.
“Those moments I can recall taking it in, just sitting there and being proud of her,” Randall said.
Randall’s mother and grandmother set the expectation that a happy and successful life is achieved through enabling the happiness and success of others, she said.
With former generations as her bedrock, Randall now hopes to empower the next wave of female leaders who want to live a life of service.
“Women empowerment is going to be the driving piece for us to continue to create women’s history,” Randall said. “If we don’t have other women empowering women to lead, and be safe to lead and have the confidence to lead … then women’s history will be a slow drag.”
For Randall, what's most important to young women is role models throughout all professions. Once women see themselves in positions of power, they can excel anywhere from the workplace to Congress.
But more representation requires beating back centuries of structural barriers, Randall said.
“The challenges are historically embedded in who we are as a nation,” she said. “We have to approach these places knowing that it was not created with us in mind … and we do so by consistently showing up and exuding our strength — our resilience.”
It’s easy for women to become discouraged when trying to enter a room full of people who don’t look like them, Randall said, but as someone established in multiple fields, confidence is key.
“My biggest advice is: Know who you are before you enter a space,” Randall said. “That space can be toxic and overwhelming. It can be so overwhelming that you forget who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing. … I see the greatest change when I see women in those positions do it with certainty of what they’re doing, why they’re doing it and who they’re doing it for — and before all of that, knowing who they are.”
Contact Jack at jlemnus@alligator.org. Follow him on Twitter @JackLemnus.
Jack Lemnus is a fourth-year journalism major and rural Alachua reporter. He loves to practice his Spanish, fill his bookshelves and gatekeep what he considers underground music.
