Between the ages of 5 and 12, Bianca and her sister, Kimberly, five years her junior, bounced together from one foster home to another, finally landing in the warm embrace of relatives, but also as foster children. 

The two girls spent the last three years in foster care with their grandmother who wanted to adopt them when it appeared as though they wouldn’t be reunited with their mother. But, fortunately, Bianca and her sister were returned to their mother’s care. 

Despite all that she endured during her childhood,Bianca is neither bitter nor angry. Rather, those experiences have informed and inspired her decision to make the world a better place for others - as a social worker. 

“I consider myself lucky in that we experienced no abuse with the strangers with whom we lived, but it was still pretty tough,” said Bianca. “Now they have laws prohibiting children from being in foster care for so long. I was blessed that my grandparents and aunts were very supportive, and my social worker was really nice and made me feel comfortable, taking me to visit my grandmother while we were living with my great-aunt. My social worker was a big part of why I wanted to grow up and become a social worker. I wanted to be that person for another child.” 

Although Bianca’s childhood was filled with uncertainty, as she not only lived in different people’s homes every few years but also attended different schools, she managed to stay focused on her school work and excel. The praise she received for her academic performance filled her with pride “and kept me going,” recalls Bianca, the valedictorian of her 6th and 8th grade classes. 

Yet, as a quiet and shy young girl, Bianca was often picked on. It didn’t help that her grandmother’s home was across the street from a housing project, where “the kids were aggressive and even violent at times.” Gangs were very much a part of everyday life in her neighborhood. 

For her own survival, Bianca mastered the art of self-preservation, a skill that also served her in good stead during high school. Her daily commute to John Jay High School in Brooklyn was laced with danger. Every day, she witnessed gang violence on the subway, with passengers randomly “beaten up.” The cruelty continued within the school walls. 

“I hung out with smart girls, and that was my saving grace,” said Bianca. So too were her over-

programmed days, which included volunteering to work with children in after-school and summer programs. 

“I have been working with families and kids for 15 years,” she said. 

Graduating with honors from high school, she left her birthplace in Brooklyn for the leafy suburbs of Long Island to attend Stony Brook University. But as she tells it, she wasn’t ready for the independent, student life and, with friends and parties distracting her from school work, she earned low grades. Concerned about the direction that she was heading, Bianca transferred to Brooklyn College, graduating cum laude with a degree in psychology in 2004. 

“I was the first person in my family to graduate from college,” said Bianca. “My mom is extremely proud of me.” 

Heeding the advice of a college advisor, she opted to work a few years before pursuing a graduate degree. In her first post-college job, she worked with clients who had traumatic brain injuries, visiting their homes to assist them with life skills, such as budgeting, opening a bank account and shopping. 

After a grueling year of driving from one client to another, she landed a position in the kitchen of a day center program for people with mental illness. Her responsibilities extended, though, far beyond cooking meals to working with a team of clients in the kitchen to help them become self-sufficient. The position was “out of my comfort zone,” said Bianca, yet she rose to the occasion. The director of the program promoted Bianca to the head of the kitchen and strongly advised her to pursue a graduate degree in social work. 

“She said it would open doors for me, and I could work in a hospital, school or in child welfare,” said Bianca. 

But what sealed Bianca’s determination to become a child welfare social worker was her arrival for a job interview at the Little Flower, a foster care agency in Brooklyn. As she entered its offices, she was suddenly overcome with a sense of déjà vu - as though she had been there before - and indeed she had. After the interview, Bianca called her mother, who confirmed that Bianca and her sister’s foster care had been under the aegis of the Little Flower. 

“It was as though I had come full circle,” Bianca said. “I knew that I had to get a graduate degree and that social work was my calling because there are hundreds of foster care agencies in the city, and this was the place I grew up. It was what I was meant to do as a social worker.” 

Little Flower hired her, and during the three years she worked for the agency, Bianca visited and monitored foster care homes to ensure children’s safety and well-being. She also made court visits and, as much as possible, tried to reunite children with their families. 

“There’s a great deal of satisfaction returning children home to their moms or dads or grandmas or whomever they want to go back to,” she said. “The experience took me back to being a child when the social worker helped me.” 

While working full-time, she applied to a graduate program at her alma mater, Brooklyn College, but her application was rejected. “It was a blessing in disguise,” said Bianca. 

Knowing that friends had secured teaching jobs after graduating from Touro College, Bianca applied to the Touro College Graduate School of Social Work. She was accepted into the school’s Fast-Track Program, an intensive 16-month full-time graduate course of study. 

“It was affordable and a program that I could manage while working at Little Flower,” she said. 

In May 2010, Bianca received an unexpected call from Allison Bobick, Touro Graduate School of Social Work’s director of Student Advancement, asking her to speak at the school’s graduation in Madison Square Garden. While Bianca didn’t achieve the highest cumulative index in the graduate program - although her 3.7 wasn’t too shabby, she was selected because of her inspiring personal history and resolve to help children in the circumstances that confronted her as a child. 

Today, as a social worker at Graham Windham, another foster care agency in Brooklyn, Bianca is fulfilling that mission. She is grateful to Touro for giving her the opportunity to pursue an MSW and acquire the skills needed to change the world “one family at a time,” said Bianca. “I’m very proud to say that I got my degree at Touro.” 

And without a doubt, Touro is very proud of Bianca Colon. 

From Vision & Values, Winter 2013