Pierre Valmera

Pierre "Pierry" Valmera (born September 29, 1981) is a retired Haitian professional basketball player, who played for Ancien in the Ligue Nationale de Basket in Switzerland.

Early years Valmera was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Having taught himself basketball in his native country, he emigrated to the United States and became a standout player at Union University in Tennessee.

Personal life When Valmera's playing career concluded, he relocated to Boston, Massachusetts where he worked as a substitute teacher in French and history at a middle school. Soon after his arrival in the states, he met David Franklin Rose, a business owner of an architecture firm. Together, they founded a non-for-profit organization called POWERforward International Inc., created to help young Haitians gain private-school educations in the United States through basketball. He is a philanthropist and donates his time and money to develop basketball in Haiti. He has 38 kids in the US on full basketball scholarships, including 6 college graduates and 1 playing for the Sacramento Kings, Skal Labissiere. Some of his other students go to the top schools in the country, like Mississippi State and Vanderbilt University.