Kendra Mervin joined Operation New Hope in November 2025 and serves as Program Administrator for the Ready4Ward project in Jacksonville. Ready4Ward, an initiative in partnership with The City of Jacksonville and part of Operation New Hope’s Ready4Change program, focuses on community-based violence intervention and prevention. In this role, she leads strategic efforts to reduce violence in targeted neighborhoods and engage individuals at high risk of involvement in violent crime and the justice system. Her expertise spans large-scale project planning and implementation, program evaluation, organizational leadership, workforce development, and grant administration. She brings extensive experience designing initiatives that advance underserved, historically marginalized, and underrepresented communities, along with a strong track record managing major federal grants from agencies including the Departments of Justice, Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services.

Prior to joining Operation New Hope, Kendra served as Associate Regional Director with Cure Violence Global, where she supervised technical training assistance, program development, and site certification efforts for partner agencies across several states and Washington, D.C. She also spent seven years serving the City of Jacksonville, including four years managing community partnerships and strategic initiatives in the Mayor’s Office and three years as a Grant Administrator overseeing federal, state, and local funding. During that time, she managed more than $40 million in grant appropriations to local nonprofits and helped lead major initiatives including the Mayor’s Community-Based Violence Reduction Initiative, Cure Violence Jacksonville, and local reentry programs.

Kendra earned her bachelor’s degree in legal communications from Florida State University and holds a Master of Public Administration with a concentration in Nonprofit Management from the University of North Florida. She lives by the principle of striving for excellence in all things and is guided by Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” as her faith serves as a driving force in her life and leadership.