PHOTO COURTESY BISHOP STATE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
“It was very hard,” Charles recalled of the initial years after his family immigrated to the U.S. from Port-au-Prince, Haiti in a 2023 interview with Adams & Reese. “But [my mother] would always say that even though we are poor, we have more opportunity here than anywhere else and it is our responsibility to do something with it.”
Log in to view the full article
PHOTO COURTESY BISHOP STATE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Olivier Charles grew up just blocks from Bishop State Community College, attending neighboring Murphy High School in Mobile, Alabama.
“It was very hard,” Charles recalled of the initial years after his family immigrated to the U.S. from Port-au-Prince, Haiti in a 2023 interview with Adams & Reese. “But [my mother] would always say that even though we are poor, we have more opportunity here than anywhere else and it is our responsibility to do something with it.”
His mother’s words resonated throughout his life and ultimately led Charles to what he refers to as his “dream job” as president of Bishop State, a two-year historically Black institution in Mobile that has achieved record-breaking enrollment during Charles’ tenure.
“I still live by those words today,” Charles said of his mother’s outlook on opportunity. “Because of her, I have spent my entire career helping people seize their opportunities.”
Colleagues credit Charles with being a dynamic leader who has had a “substantial economic impact” on the City of Mobile since taking the helm at Bishop State in 2022.
“His leadership is impressive and innovative,” Demetrius Johnson, Jr., founder, president and CEO of the HBCU Campaign Fund, said in a speech honoring Charles as a member of the eighth class of “The Ten Most Dominant HBCU Leaders of 2025.”
“He has transformed Bishop State Community College into not just the premier Historically Black Community College but a community college that is accessible to opportunities for all, providing a substantial economic impact to the City of Mobile and surrounding areas,” Johnson said.
The first time Charles laid eyes on the campus of Bishop State, he had no idea that he’d one day serve as the soon–to-be 100-year-old institution’s leader. The campus was simply on the route he took growing up to get to and from school, namely, the nearby Calloway-Smith Middle School.
“It was my physical reminder that opportunities were within my reach,” Charles recalled in the Adams & Reese interview. “I felt different when I walked across this campus. It felt possible.”
Now, Charles is on a mission to create opportunities for the growing number of students who are enrolling at Bishop State.
“Mobile was good to me growing up, and now I have the opportunity to pay it forward,” Charles told the Mobile Chamber, a nonprofit that promotes the area through business and commerce. “It’s one of the highest honors for me to give to this community that was so good to me.”
The HBCU Campaign Fund notes that Bishop State experienced a 20% surge in enrollment from fall 2022 – from 2,968 students to 3,569 students in fall 2023. Enrollment has been steadily climbing ever since and reached 4,505 students in fall 2025. Part of that growth was fueled by Bishop State’s dual enrollment program.
The Mobile Chamber’s Economic Development Department named Bishop State as “Innovator of the Year” in 2023, largely because of its advancement in the areas of aviation and advanced manufacturing. Through its Aviation Manufacturing Program, Flight Path 9, Bishop State has provided more than 2,100 industry-recognized credentials to participating students and supplied more than 120 employees to Airbus, a European aerospace company that operates an assembly plant in Mobile.
The college also opened a new state-of-the-art nursing center in 2023 to help fill jobs in the healthcare sector.
“Fourteen percent of our workforce are healthcare workers, and that equates to 40,000 people,” Charles told Fox10 News. “We have to continue to fill those needs because as Mobile grows, as other industries come in, we have to have proper healthcare to help those industries continue to grow.”
Prior to joining Bishop State, Charles served as Vice Chancellor for Student Success within the Alabama Community College System. He also served as Dean of Students at Enterprise State Community College, Director of Admissions and Enrollment Management at the University of West Alabama and as Director of Admissions and Recruitment at Auburn University at Montgomery.
Jamaal Abdul-Alim is a longtime education writer who resides in Washington, D.C. He occasionally teaches journalism and has completed fellowships at the University of Michigan, Columbia University and New America.
This story originally ran in The EDU Ledger's August 6th edition.
