Kendra is a proud first-generation Black Dominican woman, a mother, a wife, and an artist. Born in the Bronx to a working-class, immigrant mother, Kendra’s family relocated to Jamaica Plain and has since called it home. 

As a first-year high school student, Kendra co-founded and later became the director of the influential and celebrated “by-youth, for-youth” organization Beantown Society. Like many young people of color in Boston, Kendra was directly impacted by gang violence. Because of her activist perspective, she quickly saw how her experiences with community violence were explicitly tied to poverty and racism. With her eyes open wide, she stepped in and at the age of 19, Kendra became one of a handful of women and the youngest in the city to provide trauma-informed support to young people as a StreetWorker with the StreetSafe Boston Initiative. Hicks would later support the expansion of this program internationally.

Before becoming the first person of color to represent District Six on the Boston City Council, Kendra was the Director of Radical Philanthropy at the historic Boston-based organization Resist. Founded by world-renowned activist Noam Chomsky just over 50 years ago, Resist grew — with Lara at the helm — into a leading force for racial and economic justice. Anchored by a socialist vision and a commitment to bring the margins to the center, Kendra uses her head, heart, and hands to push communities and local governments to use their imaginations and the resources at hand to expand beyond the realms of possibility towards liberation.