Dr. Lewis was Dean and teacher of a high school for girls in Trinidad and Tobago. She has helped raise funds for a teenage pregnancy program at a high school in her home town of Fyzabad, Trinidad and for the first school in a village in Tibet which has the unprecedented requirement that fifty percent of its students must be girls. She has served on the board of several community organizations in the United States that promote education and equity for women and girls. She is past Co-President of the Washington, D.C. branch of the American Association of University Women. Dr. Lewis is actively involved with women's groups from her alumni association at Douglass College and Duke University.

Dr. Lewis is a columnist for the Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education magazine. Her scholarship and teaching are in Francophone West African and Caribbean literature. Her book titled, Race, Culture and Identity: Francophone West African and Caribbean Literature and Theory From Négritude to Créolité (Lexington Books, 2006), is the first comprehensive study of the relationship between Négritude, Antillanité and Créolité. Her scholarship interrogates black identity as theorized by black Francophone intellectuals, including Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Paulette Nardal and Patrick Chamoiseau.

Dr. Lewis is the first scholar to write a full biography of Paulette Nardal, the Martinican woman intellectual and activist. In her book, Dr. Lewis documents Nardal's life in Paris in the interwar period and her contributions to early modern black Francophone literature and Nardal's later work in Martinique promoting the social and political advancement of women through her review, La Femme dans la Cité. Dr. Lewis' article, "Gendering Négritude: Paulette Nardal and the Birth of Modern Black Francophone Literature" (Romance Languages Annual,1999), positions black Francophone women as intellectual contributors to the birth of the Négritude movement. In addition to her book and article, Dr. Lewis has presented her work on Nardal at conferences and on Radio Haïti, located in Port-au-Prince.

Dr. Lewis has taught at several universities, including as Visiting Professor at the University of Virginia. She has presented her scholarship both in the United States and abroad. She is a member of the Modern Language Association.

Dr. Lewis received her Ph.D. in French Literature from Duke University and her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. She obtained her B.A. in French and Spanish from Douglass College, a women's college at Rutgers University, where she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society in her junior year and awarded the Molière Prize from the French Government for outstanding achievement in French.

She practiced law as a litigator with a New York City law firm and volunteered with Legal Aid in Durham, North Carolina. On graduating from law school, Dr. Lewis received the Herbert L. Kramer Public Service Award from the Faculty of the University of Virginia School of Law. She is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and the State of New York and is an active member of the District of Columbia and New York State Bar Associations.

Dr. Lewis is fluent in French and Spanish and has reading ability in Continental Portuguese. She was born and raised in Pepper Village, Fyzabad, Trinidad and Tobago; has lived in Senegal, West Africa and Paris and Tours, France. She has traveled to Tibet and China and countries in West Africa, Western Europe, and the Caribbean.

Dr. Lewis has been featured on television, including Verizon FiOS, Comcast Newsmakers, MHz Networks and DCTV and in various magazines, including Essence, Ebony, Ms. and DIVAS, published in Paris, France. Her work with SisterMentors is documented in Allison Silberberg's book, Visionaries in Our Midst: Ordinary People Who Are Changing Our World (University Press of America, 2009).

Dr. Lewis has a daily practice of yoga and meditation and is a frequent visitor to Satchidananda Ashram--Yogaville in Buckingham, Virginia. She is vegan.

To request Dr. Lewis for your next speaking engagement or workshop for doctoral students, please call 202-778-6424.