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By Paula Detwiller
    
One of Joelen Merkel’s fondest memories was the day her son graduated from the University of Florida.
    As a trustee for the university, she was perennially invited to take part in the pomp and circumstance of graduation. But this day was different: Not only was Ryan, her only child, accepting his sheepskin, but Mom had secretly asked to confer the degrees that day, to be the person who officially instructs graduates to move their tassels from one side of their mortarboards to the other.
    “It was a complete surprise to both my son and my husband,” Merkel says. “It was a very, very special moment.”
    Merkel, of Ocean Ridge, was appointed in 2001 to the UF’s inaugural board of trustees by then-Gov. Jeb Bush, and served as a trustee for the next nine years. She also chaired the board’s audit committee the entire time, reviewing the audited financial statements for the university and all of its direct support organizations — about 28 entities altogether.
    Her years as a trustee, combined with a trailblazing career in business and her continuing involvement on various UF boards and committees, recently won Merkel a Distinguished Alumni Award from the Education Foundation of Palm Beach County. She’s one of six Palm Beach County public school alumni chosen to be honored this year for “achievement, service or contributions to society either locally or to the broader community.”
    A 1969 graduate of Palm Beach High School, Merkel became the first person in her family to attend a four-year university when she went off to earn her accounting degree at the University of Florida. The year before she graduated, she went to a university function where she met some accounting firm representatives.
    “They outright told me, ‘We don’t hire women.’ It was 1972,” Merkel says. “You could never do that in today’s world. I think the young women of today just don’t realize what it was like back then.”
    When she graduated from UF in 1973, Merkel landed a job at Arthur Anderson & Co., one of the “Big Eight” accounting firms at the time. She became only the second woman to be hired on to the company’s professional staff of 100 employees on the audit side.
    A couple of years later, she accepted a position as assistant corporate controller at Chris-Craft Industries, Inc., a boat manufacturer and New York Stock Exchange company. Over the next 25 years, Merkel advanced through the ranks, rising to the position of senior vice president, treasurer and principal accounting officer, reporting directly to the chairman of the board. By 1992, she broke through the proverbial glass ceiling to hold the same executive positions — as well as a board of directors seat — at BHC Communications, Inc., a majority-owned subsidiary of Chris-Craft that was listed on the American Stock Exchange.
    “To be a female director of an American Stock Exchange company back in 1992 was a big deal,” Merkel says. “And you know, there’s still not enough female representation on corporate boards.”
    Merkel, now 60 and retired, fully understands how today’s career women struggle to balance family and career. It’s never easy, she says.
    “I remember when my son was a baby, when I’d be away at business meetings, I would call him up and sing to him before bedtime. I’d excuse myself from wherever I was, get to a phone, and sing a lullaby to him. So you know, you do what you need to do.”
Merkel’s son Ryan now works for the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., as Assistant Manager of Major Gifts. Merkel says Ryan is “very comfortable asking people for money because he believes in what the Center is doing — advancing culture in our society.”
    As for herself, Merkel is now in Gainesville at least six times a year for board or committee meetings. She and her husband Robert, a retired West Palm Beach defense attorney, also attend many UF football and basketball games. They’ve been Bull Gators (top contributors to the UF athletic association) for more than 20 years, and have a number of scholarships and endowments in their name.
    “I’m just so thankful for the education I received, and the opportunities that came from that education, that I want to promote the University of Florida however I can,” Merkel says.       

Joelen Merkel’s current membership service to the University of Florida:

UF Foundation board of directors and its finance committee
UF Research Foundation board and current chair of its audit committee
Business Advisory Council for the UF Warrington College of Business
Steering committee for UF’s Fisher School of Accounting

Other trustee positions:
Norton Museum of Art and chair of its finance committee
The Florida House, Florida’s “embassy” in Washington, D.C.

  

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