Taylor Ford is a Connecticut native with a passion for addressing mental health and practicing intentional self-care. She is a graduate of UConn’s School of Social Work and obtained her licensure with the State of Connecticut. She aspires to help create safe spaces for people to explore their own mental health as well as non-traditional ways to heal.

Having worked in the Children’s Behavioral Health system for just shy of a decade, she focused primarily on family and youth engagement, skill and leadership development, training and providing internship supervision to social work students interested in the field. Her work has been presented in CT high school classrooms and System of Care conferences nationally. While still valuing children’s behavioral health, she has since pivoted into working primarily in both the Higher Education in Prison world and providing individual therapeutic support by working in a private practice.

Taylor has traveled as a subject matter expert and now an executive member of the Jamii Sisterhood to encourage prison education programs working with Project Freedom to incorporate mental health in
wellness into their program infrastructure. As the Director of Mental Health Education at Second Chance Educational Alliance, Inc., she has created three courses that bring psychoeducation directly to maximum security students. As she is creating her place in the HEP field, Taylor continues to create and encourage opportunities for students, educators and program staff to challenge and expand the way they think about mental health in and outside of their classrooms.

Return to 2025 John and Valerie Rowe Scholars Lecture

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