Michele Montas’ life is no ordinary life. She currently holds a respectable and demanding position within the United Nations. She is, in fact, the newly appointed spokesperson for the United Nations (U.N.). Furthermore, before working as the spokesperson for the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, she served as the Spokesperson for the U.N. General Assembly President Julian Robert Hunter.

Montas first appeared in the spotlight in the 1970s in Haiti immediately following her graduation from the University of Maine and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with Journalism and Political Affairs degrees. Her resume includes Chief Editor for the “Conjunction” and Reporter for the “Nouvelliste,” but her most notable employment was working side by side with her husband, Jean Dominique, at Radio Haiti International or Radio “Haiti-Inter.” Her work there alongside her husband was to promote democracy and freedom of speech in Haiti. Together, they stood against successive and suppressive dictatorships. Due to the government-related news and human rights issues the station reported, the couple and their employees were constant subjects of death threats. The radio’s regular criticisms on injustices by the “Duvalierists” resulted in an exile in 1980. The couple remained under the radar for six years until Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier was overthrown. The couple fled the country again in 1991 after President Jean Bertrand Aristide’s fall.

Although their dream of establishing democracy in Haiti brought them enemies, they were admired by many, particularly the less-sophisticated members of society. Montas’ husband’s involvement in agronomy (science of soil management) made him a feared man among the wealthy landowners but a hero among the peasants. He helped the farmers manage their lands in an effort to get out of debts and have control over their lands rather than relinquishing total control to their landowners. Moreover their media outlet, Radio Haiti-Inter, had a very large fan base due to their main segments reported in Creole, a language spoken by nearly the entire population, rather than in French, the language of elite society. The pair was so accepted by a large number of the public that upon their return to Haiti after their first exile, they were greeted at the airport by 60,000 people.

Michele Montas, along with her husband, continued their fight by reporting on government corruption despite many death threats against them. Then Michele’s husband was assassinated in April 3, 2000. Still, giving up on her humanitarian efforts was not an option for Montas. Instead she added one more mission to her list, to bring her husband’s killer to justice. She ran the publication until February 2003 after a failed assassination attempt against her in December 2002 that took her bodyguard’s life. She fled the country for the third time, escaping to New York.

Montas’ fight is far from over. She was awarded the Maria Moors Cabot Prize award in 2002 for her hard work in promoting free speech in Haiti. As fearless as she is, you can be assured that her current role as a U.N. Spokesperson will not be her last. As far as Radio Haiti-Inter is concerned, she said that she has plans to reopen it in the future.