Her Story
About Jennifer
I've been working professionally in my field since 2015, though honestly, I've been doing this work unprofessionally all my life. I started my current role as a Center Director for Baltimore City's Recreations and Park on February 2nd, where I oversee one of the premier sports and arts athletic centers in Baltimore. Right now, because I'm stepping into this new role, I'm learning the organization, observing the center spaces, and watching how community members interact with their children and other people's children, as well as what happens with the organization and the environment. Before this position, I worked as a special education teacher at the Baltimore Academy, a school for students with mental and physical disabilities. There, I taught all of the sciences from 6th grade to 12th grade, which meant I had to take myself back to school to relearn biology, chemistry, and all those things. I was also an art teacher at Wildwood Elementary and Middle School, teaching arts for all of the grades, and worked with Active Art Baltimore. One of my favorite jobs was as the arts coordinator at Father Ryan's Arts Center in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, where I was basically running the whole arts department by myself. We taught kids music production, screen printing, dance, theater, photography, coding, and community organizing. We brought on a Learn and Earn program where kids would learn while they earn money for the summer, taking them to places like the University of Pittsburgh, FedEx Grounds Center, and Google offices, showing them options beyond just wanting to be famous or go to a league somewhere. We showed them how to create block parties, assemble flea markets and food truck meetups, and engage within their community. Before that, I worked with the DC Public Library Foundation out of the MLK Library, and at the Children's Museum in Pittsburgh, where I learned how art exhibits move and how inventory is managed in museums. I'm a classically trained dancer, and I hold a Master's in Fine Arts and Curation from MICA, a Master's in Library Science from my fellowship with DC Public Library, and a general history degree with a certificate in African American Studies from Morgan State University. My expertise spans every aspect of what I've learned along my professional journey, including mental health education, dance, fitness, nutrition, art, curation, and history.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jennifer
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to networking and the people I meet. Even though you may not be where you want to be, it's always the people that you meet, or the experience of something that you did or said, and people remember those things. Networking is one of the most important things that you could do, because that's how I got to every avenue and every place of where I have been in life. I just network. I just talk to people. I sit outside my job, whatever job that is, and the people that walk past me, we just, you know, first it's just hello, hello, and then sometimes they'll stop, and we'll have a conversation. That's how I figured out who all the people that I need didn't know. I've also been influenced by my family, because all my family are educators. Everyone, every person in my family is an educator. Every person in my family is an artist. Every person in my family works in some type of form of the mental health industry. Someone in my family is in those categories, and I've been influenced by a lot of people, from acting to visual artwork to photography, some fitness, nutrition. Someone in my family has taught me something within those categories.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Write down a list of all the things that you want to accomplish, and then put it in a book, I call it a dream book. Have it, you know, sleep under it, put it on your pillows, or wherever you take a nap at, or whatever, and sometimes look at it. But you always know what you wrote down the first time, because it's in your mind, and it's always gonna be in your dreams. Then go back to it one day and start just crossing it off.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The main opportunities that I have faced are that I'm getting to meet people that I've never thought that I would meet in my life, and it's a beautiful thing. The challenge is that sometimes when I walk into these centers and these communities, people don't know me, so then I have to prove myself. But once I prove myself, everyone loves me.
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