With a BA in Counseling Psychology, Kimberly Paulk has devoted her career and passion to serving the citizens of Chatham
County. She spent the first three years as a Behavior Therapist and Administrative Service Coordinator, where she was responsible
for providing therapy to children on the Autistic Spectrum while later also assisting the agency and clientele administratively.
During this time, her passion and empathy for people of variousracial, socioeconomic, and educational backgrounds grew.
Kimberly has worked alongside Step Up Savannah for the last five years. In December 2016, she started as Public Benefit’s
Enroller at Step Up’s Assistive Site, Savannah Technical College, where she scaled up the Public Benefits Outreach
program and exceeded previously unmet goals by 150%. In November of 2018, Kimberly began working at Step Up Savannah as
Public Benefits’ Specialist. Within a year, she transitioned to her current role as Public Benefits Manager. Kimberly is responsible
for the public benefits’ work of 8 assistive agencies located in the communities’ most impoverished zip codes. In
direct partnership with the Department of Family and Children Services, Kimberly and partnering agency enrollers provide
advocacy and application access to all public benefits, including SNAP, Medicaid,CAPS, WIC, and TANF. Kimberly is responsible
for convening and collaborating with the assistive sites to provide public benefits service training while ensuring compliance with
the State and Federal policies.
Further, Kimberly administers several public benefits’ affiliated programming and reporting for Step Up and the Assisted Sites. She
has worked to build a competitive Public Benefits program, leading as one of the best in the State. Kimberly also represents Step
Up, as a lead community partner agency, on the Georgia SNAP workgroup. Further, she is a member of the Georgia SNAP LEP and
Policy subcommittees and serves as chair of the communications subcommittee.
In 2021, Kimberly started Step Up’s first Public Benefits Cliff task force and ran
the first-ever Step Up Savannah administered the county-wide survey. Further, she led Step Up’s partnership with the Federal
Reserve Bank of Atlanta to create the Career Opportunity Dashboard for Economic mobility (CODE), South Ga’s first-of-its-kind
tool, used to educate clients and stakeholders about the Cliffs’ effects alongside various career pathways. Kimberly is dedicated to
Step Up Savannah’s Public Benefits work and longs for an economically inclusive community.
