As a young African American woman with Caribbean descent born in Far Rockaway, Queens and raised in Brooklyn, NY Kendra Pollidore-Mulzac grew a passion to see families in the underserved communities of NYC united. Upon graduating from CUNY Lehman with her BSW, she left with a desire to empower families and see them gain access to resources and opportunity and rise to a higher level of functioning. She then went on to pursue her MSW and graduated from Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College in 2010.
Beginning her career as an early childhood teacher and teacher at an academic enrichment program for a couple of summers with teens, she gained valuable skills that helped later on to shape the way she served families. She later accepted a role over 10 years ago as a case planner for the foster care agency Heartshare human Services now Heartshare St Vincent Services. Her passion and drive to deliver trauma informed care resulted in families and co-workers publicly applauding and celebrating her efforts. A couple of years after her start as a case planner, Kendra was promoted to a supervisory position and leads a team to carry out trauma informed care, crisis intervention and support to individuals, children & families as she so passionately did in the field.
Kendra’s training and experience with trauma, cultural competency, safety and risk, coaching, motivational interviewing, solution based practice, child development, mental health, substance abuse and many others has informed her approach to the work she does daily. Kendra desires to continue to assist families to be able to recognize signs and impact of trauma, identify ways to address the experience and actively work on healing from the experiences that has impacted their life.
In addition, Kendra and her team collaborate to guide families towards permanency in the form of reunification with parents and other times developing an alternate plan which can include independent living, guardianship, custody or adoption. Kendra prides herself on being a social worker. Her strength based approach & passion to see families in the underserved communities healed, united and more prepared to face and overcome life’s challenges in a healthy way will continue to push her forward as she continues to serve and grow in her career.