Sharmeela Medriatta has been Vice President for Family & Community Support Services Graham Windham since 2011. Graham Windham was founded by Eliza Schuyler Hamilton in 1806 as the first private orphanage in New York City. She founded it to help kids like her husband Alexander Hamilton, who had a tough start in life. Now a family services agency, Graham Windham is still helping kids get their shot.
Graham Windham serves more than 4,500 youngsters a year through family foster care, adoption, child abuse prevention through family strengthening and parenting programs, behavioral supports, after-school and youth development, college and career access and support, and mental health services. Graham Windham provides services across thirteen sites in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Harlem, and Westchester County. In Westchester, they operate The Graham School, a residential school providing comprehensive and individualized academic and therapeutic supports for students who have struggled in other settings.
Through Graham SLAM (Support, Lead, Achieve, and Model) young people receive support until the age of 25 – even if they are no longer part of the child welfare system. The program coaches and guides children and adolescents in the foster care or juvenile justice systems (or at risk of entering the system) through high school, college or vocational school, and their search for a living-wage career.
Fair Futures, a coaching program for youth in foster care, was designed by Graham Windham and funded by the City of New York was been rolled out to foster care agencies across New York City in 2020.
Education:
Columbia University School of Social Work, LCSW
University of Pennsylvania, BA
Choate Rosemary Hall