Michelle Gervais Named to Florida Trend’s List of 500 Most Influential Executives
Blank Rome LLP is pleased to announce that Partner Michelle M. Gervais has been named to The Florida 500 for the second year in a row. Published annually as a special supplement of Florida Trend magazine, the notable Florida 500 list highlights the most influential executives in different economic sectors throughout the state. According to the magazine, “this immense, yearlong research initiative by the editors of Florida Trend has resulted in a personal, engaging look at the states most influential business leaders.” Michelle joins a select group of 49 attorneys recognized in the law category of this year’s edition.
Florida 500 Profile Excerpt:
Michelle Gervais
Partner, Blank Rome, Tampa
In 2015, Blank Rome, a national law firm based in Philadelphia, hired Gervais from Duane Morris in Miami, where she had developed a successful practice representing large national and international banks. Alan Hoffman, chairman of Blank Rome, said her hiring would strengthen the firm’s consumer finance group and add to its expanding presence in Florida. Since then, Gervais has led Blank Rome’s Tampa office — one of 14 firm locations across the U.S. — while playing an active role in local community and charity projects.
“I have spent many years devoting a significant amount of time to several charitable organizations, including several causes and organizations dedicated to supporting health care programs and services,” she says. As a board member for the AdventHealth Tampa Foundation, she has co-chaired Fashion for Hope, an annual event that raises money for the Kay Meyer Breast Care Center. She also has been a member of AdventHealth’s Women of Influence executive board, and she helped organize a holiday fashion show benefiting St. Joseph’s Hospital in 2017. She says if she weren’t a lawyer, she’d probably be an event planner. “I really enjoy planning events, whether it’s a social, networking or educational program. I love seeing it all come together,” she says.
Gervais also has a long record of pro bono advocacy and has been recognized by the Miami-Dade County Bar Association for her work on behalf of children and victims of domestic violence. “In the pro bono sphere,” she says, “I’ve represented Holocaust survivors in South Florida in an effort to receive foreign monies, and I’ve supervised a team of attorneys representing indigent minor immigrant children through deportation and dependency proceedings after they risked their lives escaping rape and gang violence in order to attain legal status in the United States.”
To read the full Florida 500 profile, please click here.