Tatiana Flowers was born at Saint Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital in Harlem, New York and she was born and raised in White Plains, NY by her single mother, Andrea Robinson. She attended Church Street, Highlands and White Plains High School and began using the Youth Bureau’s services as a teenager. At 14, she started her first job, as a camp counselor at a childcare facility for children with disabilities, in a program near First Baptist Church. It’s still one of her most meaningful memories and she now uses that experience to write about people with special needs.

Tatiana attended Penn State and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, where she studied visual and international reporting. Her reporting journey has led her to Morocco and Israel where she produced stories about child marriage, health, and cultural ceremonies. Today, she’s a Hearst Journalism Fellow, covering social services with the newspaper, Greenwich Time. She and a team of six journalists recently won a national award for exposing child sex abuse at the hands of volunteers, staff and even child participants at many Boys & Girls Clubs across America.

The Youth Bureau was instrumental in launching Tatiana’s career and it taught her responsibility, integrity and what it means to have a sense of purpose.