Building her future in social entrepreneurship

Domonique Griffin, a proud Buffalo native, is an Arthur A. Schomburg Fellow and a second-year Master of Urban Planning student at UB. Focusing her degree on neighborhood planning and community development, Griffin hopes to launch a social enterprise that trains and retains our local youth through a youth career development program.

Griffin graduated cum laude from Trinity College (Hartford, Conn.) where she earned her bachelor of arts degree in educational studies and American studies. As an undergraduate she was named the President’s Fellow for American Studies, received the Richard K. Morris Book Award for Excellence in Education, and was awarded the Steven D. Levy ’72 Urban Programs Senior Research Prize for her senior thesis, “They Were Never Silent, You Just Weren’t Listening: Buffalo’s Black Activists in the Age of Urban Renewal.”

Griffin is a dedicated scholar, teacher and role model for youth. As a research assistant in UB’s Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab, she helps oversee projects that promote food equity and entrepreneurship in Buffalo, NY. In between studying and working in the Food Lab, Griffin teaches high school English at the Park School of Buffalo.

Griffin's passion for research and education started during her undergraduate career, when she interned with the Hartford Hospital Anxiety Disorders Center and its Institute of Living, as well as the Santa Rosa Homework Centre in Arima, Trinidad.