Alexandria M. Kernan

Overview

With over a decade of legislative, executive, and political experience, Alex focuses on client support in legislative and public policy, as well as providing clients with guidance on the integration of government relations, communications, and issue management. Alex brings substantial knowledge in state governmental affairs and has experience interacting with key leaders and staff of all executive branch agencies in serving the state of Florida.

Alex leverages her extensive experience to provide strategic, actionable guidance to clients on critical legislative, regulatory and economic development issues. She works with clients to ensure that their positions are heard, understood and ideally, acted upon by government at all levels. Alex uses her knowledge and working relationships to secure funding and influence policy affecting a variety of areas of vital importance to clients in Florida.

She began her career in Marion County, Florida while working on House campaigns and in the Florida House of Representatives. Following this, she was a senior legislative aide and communications director for Senate Government Oversight and Accountability Chairman and later President Pro Tempore Dennis Baxley. In that role she worked on many high-profile policy and funding initiatives that made their way to the Governor’s desk. Alex also served as Deputy Communications Director for the Florida Department of Revenue and oversaw the successful implementation of several sales tax holidays including back to school tax holiday and disaster preparedness tax holiday.

Prior to joining Gunster, Alex served as the Director of Legislative and Government Affairs at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) and assisted with legislative priorities for Florida's five water management districts. In this role, she lobbied the Legislature to pass Florida's top environmental priorities for Governor Ron DeSantis, including the passage of landmark environmental legislation, such as Florida's "Clean Waterways Act" and HB 1379. She also successfully secured historic levels of state funding for FDEP, including over $3 billion for water quality and nearly $1 billion for land acquisition.