Hard Work Pays Off for North Miami Beach Grad
By Angelica Wells & Carolina Alvarez
Lee Caplin School of Journalism and Media
Published by the Biscayane Times, June 2025 Issue
Dionne Thompson moved from Jamaica to Miami when she was 33 years old with her four children. She’s a single mom who drives trucks and cleans alley ways for the village of Miami Shores.
On May 23, her youngest daughter, Shakalah will graduate from law school at Boston College after seven years of full-ride scholarship.
"I'm a tough mama," says Dionne. "I don't cry. But on the 23rd, I will."
Shakalah is proof that anything is possible. Having arrived in the U.S. at two years old, she had scholarship offers totaling $1.7 million from 16 colleges across the nation. She chose Boston College, where she has flourished. Her journey exemplifies how higher education and community impact can serve as a chance to grow, lead and leave a mark on the world.
“From the time we were kids, it was clear that Shakalah carried a deep and unwavering desire to make the world a better place,” says her childhood friend, Marlika Marceau, a Yale graduate and World Bank Fellow. “Even with a full plate and a calendar packed with commitments, she never forgets the people she loves.”
Marceau and Dionne both grew up around hardscrabble Miami Gardens, where Dionne moved after arriving in the United States. She worked as many as four jobs at a time to support her children, including being a roofer, nail technician and food caterer. In a few years, Dionne was able to buy a house in the same area.
Shakalah was only two when the family arrived. She went to school and worked hard. While attending Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School, She balanced volunteering with multiple honor societies, worked full-time at Sicilian Oven in Aventura all while earning competitive grades in the gifted-honors program.
Her last two years, she took dual enrollment classes at FIU, before transferring to Boston College, where she not only received a full ride, but also the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship for demonstrating superior academic achievement and involvement with the African American community.
"I was actually pre-med for the majority of my life," says Shakalah. "I tunnel-visioned, kind of expecting myself to be a doctor, but then as I went through BC undergrad, things started to shift around.
In her sophomore year at Boston College, Shakalah co-founded an outreach organization for underrepresented students called The STEM and Health Outreach for AHANA (African, Hispanic, and Native American). It creates spaces for underrepresented students to communicate, tutor one another and learn from professionals.
She changed majors from biochemistry to sociology because she discovered that her natural talents aligned with advocacy, speaking and persuasion.
"I wanted to become a lawyer because I realized that when it comes to work, you're better off making your work align with your natural qualities,” she said. “That's where you have the room to be creative and become an expert in what you do."
This past March, she self-published her first book, "What the Dark Night Taught Me." In this poetry collection that took a year and a half to create, she dove into her experiences with the dark night of the soul, or existentialism.
"I want people to remember my essence and not just my accomplishments,” she says. “I need to give life to these things that I think are actually extensions of myself."
Her mom Dionne was a home health aid for a family for 15 years and is now a certified truck driver in waste management in Miami Shores.
Dionne, she says, was strict growing up, but Shakalah is thankful for her mother's overprotectiveness.
"She's just had a very hard life and she's had to learn a lot of things and has so much wisdom,” says Shakalah. “I think that she was very tough because when you're doing it all by yourself, you have to be as extreme as you can be.”
Today, Shakalah is working on a second collection of poetry. After she graduates with her JD, she will move back to South Florida. After two summers of interning at law firms, she plans to practice commercial litigation.
She is excited to have her own place to call home after moving each year in her journey at Boston College. In a few months, she will also have to pass the Bar Exam to become an attorney. Then, she will work at a law firm.
“You get taught very early in physics that energy is neither created or destroyed,” says Shakalah. “So know that if you’re putting energy into something, it has to amount to something. It has to go somewhere.”
As expected for a young adult and parent, Shakalah and her mother’s relationship had its challenges. The decision to leave the state for college was not easy. However, this decision helped Shakalah and her mother’s relationship blossom into the proud and supportive one it is today.
