With recent media attention
centered on the county’s affordable housing measures, a corrupt
empowerment trust, more than $225 million in budget cuts and
targeted personnel changes in various county departments,
Mallette has had her hands full. She often asks reporters
“what’s your angle?” before checking the mayor’s busy schedule
for an interview slot.
“In the end, as
communicators, we consider ourselves more as facilitators than
gatekeepers,” Mallette said.
Obviously, she’s no rookie.
She received her bachelor’s
degree in broadcast journalism with a minor in political science
from Florida International University and a master’s degree in
communications from Boston University. Mallette spent a decade
in television news as the senior political producer at WPLG-TV,
Channel 10, in Miami, before moving on to WINK-TV, in Fort
Myers, as a producer. She relocated to the Alvarez camp after
run-ins with the gamut of local politicos.
And Mallette is no stranger
to politics.
“As long as I can remember,
local, state and national politics have been a topic of
conversation around the family dinner table,” she said. “We
discuss. We debate. And, we don’t always agree.”
Her sister, Kelly Mallette ––
who has worked with power lobbyist and attorney Ronald L. Book,
whose clients range from General Tobacco to sexual abuse victims
–– is a commissioner on the Biscayne Park dais and the former
advisor to ousted Miami Mayor Joe Carollo. Their dad, Alfred
Mallette, is a retired Miami-Dade police major.
Armed with the training,
experience and political savoir-faire to take on arguably one of
the most precarious jobs in county government, Mallette refuses
to ignore the challenges of being a woman.
