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Azenaide Pedro is a CEI’s 2024 Justice Fellow, working with the lending team. She previous served as CEI’s workforce solutions team’s program specialist for the Child Care Business Lab.

Originally from Angola, Pedro came to Maine three years ago from Johannesburg, South Africa, where she received a BA in public health from Monash University. In 2020, she was one of the first individuals to apply for the pilot cohort of CEI’s Child Care Business Lab to learn how to help five women, who immigrated to Lewiston from Angola, start a cooperative child care center. The co-op is scheduled to open in May. In her new role at CEI, Pedro will focus on growing additional child care options in Lewiston’s Tree Streets neighborhood, one of the state’s most diverse areas, with the densest population of children in the state. During recent listening sessions in the community, she confirmed the need for culturally appropriate, high quality, affordable child care that is responsive to around-the-clock work schedules. Pedro is pursuing an associate’s degree in business administration and management from Central Maine Community College.