Jacqueline Kennedy is a public service professional with over a decade of experience in the field of community development and community engagement. Jacqueline’s interest in community development began in her own neighborhood in Southeast San Diego, CA, where she interned for a non-profit serving her community. In 2009, Jacqueline relocated to NYC for graduate school and served at a Brownsville Brooklyn based non-profit coordinating community outreach and engagement strategies and projects. Earning a trusted place in the Brownsville community and a leader within the initiative, Jacqueline stepped into the role of Interim Director of the Brownsville Partnership initiative in 2015 before leaving in 2016 to join the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as the Director of Community Partnerships at the newly-formed Center for Health Equity. Here, she focused her work on creating engagement strategies to support community safety, healthy living, and, most recently, community level trauma support, healing, and neighborhood-based emergency management.
After five years and more than a year and a half supporting NYC’s response to COVID-19, Jacqueline joined the NYC Racial Justice Commission in June of 2020 as the Public Engagement Director. Jacqueline worked with Commissioner and other City staff members in hosting public input sessions virtually and in person to hear from New Yorkers most impacted by systemic racism before leaving City government to work as an independent consultant.
Jacqueline is committed to equity for communities of color, advancing racial equity globally, Black liberation, Black women’s health, and joy. She holds a BA in Sociology from the University of California, San Diego and an MPA in Nonprofit Management and Policy from NYU Wagner School of Public Service.