Today, Shaw manages over eight contracts and budgets of more than $20 million. Among her numerous duties, she opened and assumed operations of two shelters for women and children. She oversees juveniles in children’s community residences and group homes, as well as supportive housing for young adults who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, adults leaving state psychiatric  hospitals, living in homeless shelters and being discharged from state prisons who need housing.

Her immediate plan includes convincing lenders, politicians and government officials to help HeartShare build from ground up a supportive housing building and create a one-stop shop of housing, mental healthcare and other crisis needs under one roof. Currently, HeartShare clients live in rental apartments scattered throughout the city. “Imagine how we can improve services and support when everyone is in one location,” says Shaw, 47. “Accomplishing this is my passion, but it’s rooted in pragmatism.”

Shaw holds training sessions to help her team meet the complex needs of HeartShare’s young and vulnerable clients. Housing is a start, but Shaw and her staff also reunify clients with family members and, when possible, ease them back into school and empower them to earn a GED diploma.

Her work on behalf of New York City youth and families has not gone unnoticed. Shaw recently was recognized by City & State Magazine as one of “The 2023 Above & Beyond Innovators: New Yorkers who are disrupting the status quo and driving transformative change.”

Shaw, who came from Jamaica when she was 22, and eventually saved enough money to bring her mother and disabled brother to live with her, worked as a paralegal with the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn for years. She eventually became a manager. Still, she knew she could do much more for young people—abused, neglected, mentally ill, homeless—navigating the complex maze of the New York juvenile justice system.

“Judges give more weight to what a social worker says than to the information from a paralegal, even though we spend a lot of time with the kids in the system and know how to navigate it for their benefit. But in the pecking order, paralegals are not licensed, and social workers are licensed,” Shaw says bluntly. “So, I became a licensed social worker.”

Shaw makes it sound easy. It was not. An intern in her office showed Shaw a brochure from Touro University Graduate School of Social Work (GSSW). Though she worked full time and had no money for school, Shaw took out loans and graduated with a master’s degree in social work in 2015. “Touro was a godsend,” she says. “Every single professor was caring and compassionate and knew what they were talking about because they were professionals in the field. They infused me with the values that I approach my work every day—with seriousness, professionalism and love.”

In fact, says Shaw, “I hire Touro graduates because I know the quality of individual I’m getting.”