About Us

Community Cradle provides innovative and dynamic health programs and resources crucial to the lives of women and families of the

Greater Capital Region of New York State.  

 

Community Cradle seeks to ensure that our Capital Region families have available the full range of quality, accessible, culturally-sensitive, and continuous health and social services needed to improve pregnancy outcomes and infant health, and to promote the health and well-being of the family.  Because we take a broad view of public health, we work on a wide range of issues including access to healthy food, transportation, safe recreation, and smoke free housing, and the prevention of community violence.

We are a high impact not-for-profit organization governed by a diverse Board of Directors, which includes health and human service providers, professionals in other fields, and consumers. 

 

 

Meet our Staff 

Our professional staff consists of an Executive Director, a Perinatal Program Coordinator, an Outreach Health Educator, and a number of consultants and volunteers.

 

Lucy Pulitzer

Executive Director

Lucy comes to Community Cradle with an MS in Public Health Nutrition from Columbia University and a PhD in Medical Sociology from SUNY Albany.

Lucy has developed a health education curriculum for use in a highly diverse area of rural northern California, worked with Southeast Asian refugees at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, and with homebound AIDS patients in Brooklyn. After teaching Medical Anthropology for 15 years to RNs and raising money for health and education programs in Haiti, she was happy to come to Community Cradle and return to her original field of interest, family health. She is very excited about the organization’s newest focus on cultural competency, and latest initiatives on immigrant and refugee health issues.

Lucy enjoys spending time in her garden by the Normanskill, making soup with the vegetables she grows, and doing NY Times Sunday crosswords. She has a daughter who attends Harvard Divinity School, and a son who is pursuing a BA at SUNY Albany and planning a career in public health.

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Amanda Mulhern

Perinatal Program Coordinator

Amanda joined Community Cradle after receiving a BA in Personality/Social Psychology from Keene State College in New Hampshire and an MS in Community Health Education from The Sage Colleges.

Amanda has a strong interest in maternity care, refugee women's health, family and health literacy, childhood trauma, and adolescent health. She believes strongly in the importance of doulas (birth attendants) for improving birth outcomes, and is working toward making this essential service available to all the women of the Capital Region. Through her efforts, Community Cradle has received special funding for a regional conference as well as programs targeted to the unmet needs of the area's refugee population.

A lifelong resident of the Capital Region, Amanda is recently married, and enjoys spending time with her two Golden Retrievers. This summer she is determined to grow at least two varieties of vegetables in pots on her patio.

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Shannon McWilliam

Outreach Health Educator

Shannon was raised in Vermont and moved to the Capital Region after completing her BS in Human Development & Family Studies at the University of Vermont. She is pursuing an MPH at SUNY Albany.

In the course of her graduate studies, Shannon has become increasingly interested in community mental health issues. She has recently returned from a volunteer service trip to the Dominican Republic through the School of Public Health, where she offered nutrition advice, planted vegetable gardens, and installed water filters for a community of Haitians, many of whom are living with HIV/AIDS. This trip has rekindled her interest in travel and she plans to pursue similar opportunities in the future.

Through work, she has become aware of the particular physical and mental health needs of women veterans, and feels that this should be a growing area of focus for organizations dealing with family health. Shannon relaxes by running and watching movies.

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Emily Prouty

Bilingual Specialist

Originally from Northern Colorado, Emily comes to Community Cradle after spending a decade in Nashville, Tennessee as a student and honorary Southerner.  During her time at Vanderbilt University, she completed a BA in Latin American Studies, a MEd in Community Development and Action and studied for a year at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso in Chile. 

Her academic work took her to Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and Bangladesh and allowed her to explore most of Latin America, a region in which she is deeply interested. 

Her professional interests include international community development, immigrant and refugee issues and cultural competency.  She also enjoys running, farmers markets, Pilates, public spaces and potted plants. 

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Kate Paarlberg

Spanish Bilingual Consultant

Kate moved to the Capital Region to pursue a PhD in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at SUNY Albany. She has a BA in Spanish from Hope College and an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth.

Kate spent several years as a political organizer in Washington D.C. and has worked in home-visiting with low income Spanish-speaking parents.

Kate will be working with Community Cradle on projects designed to provide more comprehensive services to the Spanish-speaking community of the Greater Capital Region.

An avid traveler, Kate has visited India and Palestine and traveled throughout Latin America.

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Polly Hartman

Literacy Consultant

Polly was born and raised in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. She received a BA in elementary education from Carroll College and began teaching kindergarten and first grade in White Plains, NY. She received a MS in Family and Community Relations from Teacher's College of Columbia University, and a MLS from SUNY/Albany and worked as a Children's Librarian at the Bethlehem Public Library until her in retirement in 2006. She provides advice and guidance to Community Cradle on family and health literacy programming.

Polly loves to travel, having recently visited Thailand and Cambodia. She is the proud parent of two sons and a daughter who are attorneys.

 

Our History

Community Cradle, formerly known as The Maternal Infant Network (MINCR) has its roots as a perinatal educational outreach program, having received initial outreach grant funding from the New York State Department of Health, Bureau of Women's Health in 1991. Community Cradle established itself as an independent, not-for-profit organization, and became one of the Comprehensive Prenatal-Perinatal Services Networks in 1995. Since then, Community Cradle has been working to remove barriers to accessing community and health services needed by regional families by offering community education and resources, and by facilitating collaborations of consumers, and health care and human service providers.