Connie Pierre-Antoine

... IF YOU WALK WITH STRUCTURE AND COMPASSION, YOU’VE GOT TO USE BOTH FEET.

- Connie Pierre-Antoine

Story By: Zondra Victor

Connie Pierre-Antoine has dedicated her life to helping improve the quality of life for children and families. As a professional in child welfare for over 20 years, Connie has been able to provide muchneeded attention to areas that may have been forgotten about in her profession. Her organization, Genesis Family Enrichment Center (FEC), leads with the vision, “Strengthening Families. Transforming Communities.”

At the beginning of her 14-year career with Partnership for Strong Families, Connie started as a trainer and diligently worked her way up to reach her position as Staff Development Director. Her natural leadership skills charged her initiative to grow the program. She and her staff were responsible for the professional development, certification and continued education of child welfare professionals and helped in steering the organizational goals for other departments such as licensing and adoption.

During her time there, Connie developed a new program where biological parents could self-evaluate and track their growth as they work to address the problems that brought them to the department’s attention. This program helped parents rebuild the foundation of their families by helping them heal from their past. While managing such a progressive program, Connie decided to further her own professional development by returning to school.

Connie enrolled in Trust Based Relational Intervention training at Texas Christian University and became a TBRI and Certified Parent Instructor. In full transparency, she disclosed her vision and her goals of furthering her education with her supervisor. She shared her plans of starting her new organization, Genesis FEC, which garnered support from her supervisor so that she could still work full-time and travel to take courses. Soon afterward, she left Partnership for Strong Families to start her organization and make her vision come alive.

Genesis FEC is a nonprofit organization Connie founded in 2018 that focuses on addressing the impact of trauma and creating experiences for children that promote resilience within the community.

“When you show up, you show up,” said Connie about her unwavering ambition. “If I was going to leave my kiddos for work, I was going to work hard.”

As a child of immigrant parents, Connie learned about how to have an unmatched work ethic in her own household. She continues to be an example for the employees and volunteers she hires at Genesis FEC. She also holds her team to a higher standard of being able to understand the backgrounds and needs of the families they serve. “I can’t teach someone to have compassion,” said Connie. “A lot of volunteers have experienced life, and that brings compassion.”

Leading with compassion is one of Connie’s core values of her organization. She finds this to be the key when working with parents who come from tough environments. While training is available for several skills needed to perform their job, the team members at Genesis FEC are expected to have a heightened level of understanding and to know why they are doing the work they do.

“They need to know their why,” said Connie. “We’re not selling a product. We’re selling a service. Families come to be served and healed.”

Genesis FEC holds TrustBased Relational Intervention (TBRI) workshops for both professionals and caregivers who work with children from tough environments. Connie has facilitated several of these workshops herself and has created other programs to help improve familial habits, such as TBRI Nurture Groups, which is a complementary program that offers a safe space to work through trauma through child-centered activities, and ADHD/ ADD Assessments, which helps parents gain more knowledge about the cause of their child’s behavior and gives parents unconventional coaching and an action plan.

“If you only walk on one leg [structure], you’re going to be unbalanced,” said Connie when asked about the critical skills needed when working at Genesis FEC. “But if you walk with structure and compassion, you’ve got to use both feet.”

Connie’s focus and determination not only comes from her experience in child welfare, but as a mother of three.

“As a trainer with Partnership [for Strong Families], I was taught it is not personal, you just go and do the job,” Connie explained. “It is personal. I have a daughter diagnosed with ADD. I have a son with sensory challenges. As a mother, I didn’t know how to meet their unique and peculiar needs.”

Seeing so many children being underserved throughout her career, in addition to struggling to find the resources needed to help her own children, motivated her to provide those resources herself.

While carrying out her work with Genesis FEC, Connie has encountered some challenges along the way. The organization is working hard to find solutions on how to get communities “unstuck” about the definition of what an intervention for families should look like. There are also other limitations including the fact that they do not accept insurance.

Nevertheless, these challenges have been accompanied by an expanded outreach to families outside of the Gainesville area. Since going mostly virtual, Genesis FEC has been able to provide services for even more families than expected. The organization has learned how to engage people virtually and currently holds virtual consultations, workshops, courses, and coaching.

Connie has received inspiration from TedTalks as well as from other female leaders. She believes the ability to multitask makes women great leaders. Throughout her journey, Connie has also gained inspiration from the families she serves at Genesis FEC, noting that they always have something to teach her.

Connie wants other people who are trying to make their vision come true to learn to adapt. “Be flexible. Don’t be rigid,” said Connie. “Be flexible with understanding and relating to people. Still keep your vision, but be flexible.”