Growing up in a very political household in the Bronx in New York City, Mrs. Kimmel learned at a young age the importance of advocating for what you believe in.

Mrs. Kimmel’s dad was in the Navy and felt it was an American’s duty to vote, and her mom worked hard for equal rights for women and minorities.

She carried these beliefs with her to the University of Michigan and started off her freshman year at the polls for the 1988 presidential election between Democrat Mike Dukakis and Republican George H.W.Bush.  Mrs. Kimmel recalls being “so excited [to work at the polls]  I started crying.”

According to Mrs. Kimmel, in college she took up some of the very same issues her mother did. She recalls that she was very vocal and expressed herself a lot at that time in her life and – like her mother – advocated for equal rights for women and minorities. “I felt that in the time I was going to college, women and minorities did not have full equality, ” says Mrs. Kimmel. As for how successful she was at effecting change, Mrs. Kimmel says, “Every time I advocate I feel like I’m making a change in our society.”

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English, she attended San Francisco State University to get her Teacher’s Certification. She ended up getting a job in California, where she became an English teacher and taught an elective class called Peer Mediation where she taught the effects of racism, sexism, and bullying to students in the class.

She continued teaching English at Annandale High School in Virginia, where she learned that  her passion was really counseling people. According to Mrs. Kimmel, “what really made me find my passion was students coming in at lunch every day, telling me about their problems, seeking  advice and support.” Realizing this made her pursue a degree in secondary counseling at George Mason University.

She got her first job as a counselor here at Paint Branch in 2006. Eventually, Mrs. Kimmel became the counselor for the AVID program, which doubles the amount of work she has to do but, since she really loves the program and the students in it, it is worth it, and calls it the “highlight of her life.”

Two years ago, she helped start a very popular club here at PB, Campus Forum, which gives students the opportunity to voice their opinions about different social and political issues.

However, while Mrs. Kimmel has taken on new roles as an educator, her role as a political being has not changed. One election cycle that she is involved in every four years  is the presidential election. According to Mrs. Kimmel, since 2008,  she goes to Pennsylvania with her family and encourages people to go out and vote in the Get Out to Vote (GEOTV) campaign. She hopes that her two daughters will carry along these beliefs and pass them down to their children, just as her parents did for her.