SitemapTara Walker-Pollock is like many young professionals who left the area to pursue career dreams in a bigger city. And like many young professionals, she returned with experiences and the belief that there’s opportunity in Youngstown.
“It wasn’t like I had to leave, but I just didn’t see an opportunity for me here at that time,” she says. “But I knew I wanted to come back and contribute to where I was from.”
She graduated from Campbell High School and headed to Kentucky, where she had family, to go to college. Walker-Pollock received a baccalaureate in communications from the University of Louisville. She wanted to pursue a career in journalism and an opportunity for an internship at a magazine took her to New York City.
Dennis Pollock grew up in Harlem. He used to ride subway trains, finding music on every street corner and a variety of life that’s open 24/7.
Walker-Pollock’s roommate in New York happened to go to high school with Pollock. “There was a connection right from the start,” Pollock says.
After graduating from high school, he wanted to produce music. While pursuing that dream he had several other jobs, but ended up living with his mother in Maryland.
“That was not the place where I wanted to be in my life,” Pollock says. But job prospects weren’t much better in Maryland when the stock market collapsed, and he wanted to take his relationship with his would-be wife further. So he decided to enlist in the Army.
“It was one of those decisions I felt would just help out all around. The military would help me and help me be a better man for her,” he says.
The couple married in September 2001 and Pollock deployed to Afghanistan in October. He was a communications specialists working on radios and computers and spent a year overseas. During that time, his wife moved back with family in Youngstown.
While home she was deciding on what to do with her career and wanted to pursue graduate school online. Her first thought was to study urban planning. “One thing that drew me to the idea of urban planning was that the cost of living in New York City is sky high, and the process of trying to find an affordable, nice place to live was something that was interesting to me,” she says.
“Seeing gentrification up close and personal is something that just kind of drew me. I wanted to see how can I contribute to that field,” Walker-Pollock says.
Exploring her options, she learned about Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. and she sought an internship. “That experience opened my eyes to the opportunities that were here and to build on what they were doing,” she says. She received her degree in economic and community development.
To read the full story from The Business Journal, click here.