Alina Polianski

My responsibility is to ensure that the families I work with receive the support they need. We work with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and autism, and our job is to provide companionship services, home and community habilitation services to families. Technically, if we fail, there is an individual in this world who cannot navigate any activities of daily living without support. So my job is to ensure those activities of daily living and that this individual is being supported. I have a few dozens of families that depend on our services. One of my most notable achievements was getting our agency license in just 6 months, when the process usually takes a couple of years. I opened LinkedIn and contacted every director of Department of Human Services in Pennsylvania. I broke the hierarchy and could highlight the urgency and the need, and at that point it was easier for them to say yes than to make me follow the rules. Recently, we fought for our minors - we have 4 clients who are minors who were supposed to get their support hours cut. No one could communicate the reason, and we could not see the logic in it. We advocated and contacted everyone again, connected everyone on the highest level, and we ended up being right. Our minors will have their hours saved for the next year. This field is highly demanding and people get burned out so fast, but we're not there yet, so we have this energy to advocate and speak up.