Dr. Miriam Velasquez is a linguist and educator specializing in Caribbean Creole languages. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of the West Indies and has taught at the University of Miami and FIU. Her book, Words of the Islands: The Story of Creole Languages, received the Linguistic Society of America’s Leonard Bloomfield Book Award in 2024. Velasquez also advises regional education ministries on multilingual curriculum development.