About L'Oreal Kennedy
L’Oreal Kennedy is a first-generation college graduate and the first in her family to attend graduate school. In 2009, she graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Arts in social work, before pursuing nurse-midwifery to decrease disparities in health care among women of color.
In 2013, L’Oreal completed an accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, graduating with honors. She was selected to be a Helene Fuld Health Trust Fellow and engaged in patient safety and quality improvement education. She was a lead doula in the Birth Companions Program, a free doula service for underserved women in the Maryland area. She also worked with adolescents, women of color, clients of the International Rescue Committee, and fellow advocates to help decrease her community’s high pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality rates. In 2016, L’Oreal completed the Nurse-Midwifery Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program with honors at the University of Washington School of Nursing and then served as an advanced registered nurse practitioner in fertility/reproductive endocrinology at Seattle Reproductive Medicine. She became the founding clinician for an outpatient high-risk breast cancer screening program at Valley Medical Center in 2017, where she continued to provide hereditary cancer risk assessment and managed breast health until beginning medical school.
L’Oreal has a great interest in cancer screening and prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, particularly among women of color with hereditary mutations, and plans to pursue an Obstetrics/Gynecology residency and a fellowship in Gynecologic-Oncology.
Outside of school, she enjoys traveling with her husband and two children, skiing, trying new restaurants, and mentoring folks of color interested in health professions.
