Kendra Suarez supports young people through the college application process and career preparation as the College and Career Readiness Student Support Coordinator at Sunnyside Community Services in Queens. Kendra graduated from Brooklyn College in 2021 with a bachelor’s in Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies and is a former CARA College Bridge Coach at Gotham Professional Arts Academy.
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Working as a Bridge Coach emphasized that this is a field I want to work in – college work is just one of the ways to help kids navigate through the process of finding their individuality and advocating for themselves. The environment of coaching at Gotham definitely helped me to figure out my path – I had conversations with [my supervisor and the social worker] to figure this out, and other conversations within the Gotham community helped me to recognize my strengths. The interpersonal part is a huge strength of mine, so that helped solidify “oh yeah, I want to do one-on-one work.”
At Gotham, I was working side-by-side with my supervisor on the curriculum; I would do some research on programs, and even led seminar classes. Having that space to do that with him led to all the opportunities I am able to take now because I built so many skills. Especially more towards my last two years of Bridge coaching, we started developing new initiatives. I advocated for a new seminar class when we went virtual [during the pandemic]. I became part of the conversations about what skills our kids weren’t receiving…and have tried to work on how we can build those skills into the system.
Coaching increased my interest in advocacy in youth development – combining my experience plus working with students going through that experience, it was definitely a whole backtrack of…how to be able to let adolescents advocate for themselves and be their authentic self. And I feel like that comes in a lot when you’re transitioning to possibly college, because there’s always this pressure of like, do I wanna go to college? Do I not? My personal mission is to be able to help kids define their individual selves authentically and help them define what that is. I’m not gonna tell you that you have to go to school – here are your options though. I like to let kids know they have a voice and that I’m here to just listen.
In the midst of nearing graduating college, I was looking up gap year programs, and essentially what I liked about the Public Allies [Americorps program] was the cohort aspect of it and the grants for more education, and the non-profit aspect of it because Public Allies specifically pairs you with a non-profit and I know eventually I want to get more into nonprofit work or start my own nonprofit. So that just felt like a nice way to learn more about the industry. When I was placed at Sunnyside in Queens, the programming was restructuring, so I learned a little bit of everything which is how I’ve been able to expand on my knowledge rather than it just being only college and career advising. I’m also learning about grants because it’s such a small program that it’s…easy to know what’s happening, including me. I definitely didn’t expect that when I first started.