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STAFF SPOTLIGHT: Kimberly Paulk

Staff Spotlight: Kimberly Paulk      

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.