Giving Compass' Take:
- LISC interviews Kelly Wofford to discuss her work as a mental health and community outreach professional.
- What can donors do to empower BIPOC communities through sufficient mental health services?
- Learn about how to improve diversity in mental health research.
What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Kelly Wofford is a veteran community engagement professional in the field of health care. This past March, after five years as director of community relations at Erie County Medical Center, a major teaching hospital and Level 1 Trauma Center on Buffalo’s East Side, Wofford joined the University at Buffalo School of Nursing. There she works as community engagement coordinator in research efforts looking at how a mindfulness-based stress reduction intervention can best be delivered in marginalized communities.
Her passion is supporting mental health, especially for people of color and women. She does that as a speaker, minister, and popular podcaster, and through peer-based workshops she facilitates as founder and principal of Front Seat Life, LLC. She is a certified provider of mental health first aid, mindfulness life coaching, and mental health peer support.
To all this work Wofford brings extraordinary candor about her own experience of mental illness—including a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and a suicide attempt—and about the practices she maintains to keep herself healthy.
Read the full article about mental health at Local Initiatives Support Corporation.