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Laura A. Kennedy, LMSW (she/her/hers)

COMMUNITY BEHAVIORAL HEALTH MANAGER AND BILINGUAL THERAPIST
MATTIE RHODES CENTER
KANSAS CITY, MO, United States

Laura Kennedy, LMSW, is a Bilingual Therapist and Community Behavioral Health Manager at the Mattie Rhodes Center in Kansas City, Missouri. Prior to her clinical work, she was a Bilingual Independent Living Specialist for adults with developmental disabilities at Mattie Rhodes and a Project Coordinator for the LifeCourse Nexus at the Institute for Human Development at the University of Missouri Kansas City. Laura grew up around several family members who had severe and persistent mental illness. As a professional, these experiences motivate her to improve care services to ensure they are liberatory-truly led and directed by the person seeking assistance-rather than punitive or restrictive. She has witnessed the power of community to facilitate true, lasting healing and hopes to be a practitioner that can contribute to dismantling barriers and oppressive systems that obstruct our capacity to help each other thrive. She is passionate about mutual aid, peer support, the brain-body connection, wraparound and traditional methods of community care, centering lived-experience in change efforts, and learning everything she can about neuroscience. Laura is also a writer, artist and classical pianist and uses the arts as tools for healing and social change. In her free time, she loves listening to audiobooks, visiting farmers markets, wandering through public libraries and re-watching Studio Ghibli films with her husband and son.

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