Kean Graduate Targets Health Inequities as NAACP Leader
Cassandra Bien-Aime ’25 MPA is committed to addressing the health inequities faced by Black and brown communities.
That passion drove her to volunteer with the NAACP’s Oranges and Maplewood Branch, where she is third vice president and health committee chair. It also compelled her to advocate for greater awareness about the health disparities faced by Black women with endometriosis.
Now, after graduating from Kean University with a master's degree in public administration with a concentration in health care administration, Bien-Aime is seeking licensure as a nursing home administrator, driven by a longstanding commitment to supporting the aging population.
“Kean gave me my second wind, another chance to do what I'm passionate about,” she said. “My professors showed me I could do it. They taught me that I have an internal light and shouldn’t dim it.”
To Ruthann Russo, Ph.D., an adjunct professor in Kean’s College of Business and Public Management, Bien-Aime “embodies the spirit of public service. She puts the needs of others at the forefront and is an extraordinary resource to the communities she serves.”
After seven years with the NAACP, Bien-Aime is proudest of her most recent accomplishments: moderating a regional clean-water panel, lobbying for bill A2158 to make incest illegal in New Jersey and overseeing a program aimed at ensuring that each local neighborhood has residents who know CPR.
“It’s fulfilling to help another person,” she said. “I want to be brave enough to continue for those who are voiceless, but I feel even better when people see what I’m doing and decide to get involved.”
Danielle Thomas, president of the NAACP’s Oranges and Maplewood Branch, said Bien-Aime has created programs focused on men’s mental health, maternal and infant mortality and period poverty while also boosting voter registration. She won the organization’s Alma Clay Award for service and leadership in 2025.
A lifelong dancer, Bien-Aime also leads the nonprofit Dancin’ Off the Endo, Inc., launched a decade ago to raise awareness of endometriosis and women’s health through dance. She received her foundational training at the Maria Priadka School of Dance in South Orange, whose annual recitals were held at Kean. Priadka’s husband, Tony Ochrimenko, also had deep ties to the University, serving as a longtime soccer coach.
Bien-Aime’s mentor, attorney Patricia Weston Rivera, a Kean graduate who served on the Board of Trustees when the University was known as Kean College, is impressed “that someone so young was willing to take that chance and spend so much time on this for other people.”
A resident of South Orange, where she grew up, Bien-Aime was previously a mental health case worker for the New Jersey Department of Corrections after earning a B.A. in criminal justice and sociology from Bloomfield College in 2007. Although she pivoted away from that role, it reinforced her passion for supporting people and communities.
Bien-Aime continued to follow that calling at Kean, where she provided emotional support to students in crisis as part of her capstone project, interned at an adult care facility and served as a research assistant for Nurture New Jersey, a maternal and infant health initiative.
Determination is the thread that ties together her successes, Bien-Aime says, and she hopes others will embrace the same mindset.
“One thing that people should know about me is that ‘resilient’ is an understatement,” she said. “Each day that we're able to wake up, we need to know that we’re truly unstoppable. Stand tall and deeply rooted like a tree, because nobody can knock you down.”
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