By g.r. mattox

Karen L. Clark says she is lucky to work in a capacity where outreach is an integral part of what she does and there are some resources available to work with. She is president and chief operating officer of Horizon NJ Health, the state’s largest managed health care company serving 287,000 people in all 21 counties.

To do this Clark has come a mighty long way, to give back and come back. Like her father, she grew up in Pennington, NJ, near Trenton, in the 1950’s and early 60’s, where the Black population even now is about 2.6 percent. As a child she was often called a "Chinese Nigger" and took considerable abuse from her classmates. She went to school in a one-room schoolhouse and was the next to the last person to be dropped off on the bus. One day a white classmate, normally the last person to leave the bus, was out sick. The bus driver decided that he wasn’t going any farther "with any nigger" and left her two miles from her home on the other side of a very busy highway.

She was in kindergarten.

In the fourth grade one of the boys called her the N-word and hit her in the head with a rock, almost knocking her out. When she was taken to the teacher and the situation explained, the teacher responded, "Well, that’s what she is, isn’t she?"

"I often got terribly angry or hurt," she remembered, "but always there was this burning desire to get out of there and get past it." To have that desire was a blessing because despite the disinterest of teachers and guidance counselors she made good grades and went on to college to prepare for a career.

To survive treatment like she had endured took monumental strength of character and Karen Clark’s character grows daily. She works with many faith-based and community initiatives and tries to integrate this in what she does on the job. "We try to develop programs that include or support ministers, very often with the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association, trying to tie these organizations with the faith-based groups so we can approach some of the people that are suffering from health care disparities.

"We engage others that already have relationships with people that we serve to help influence them to get access to healthcare," she continues.

Currently she is working with the nurses’ units of many churches in starting a program that will provide some real training and skills for dealing with health problems for people in the church.

Clark is a recognized spokesperson for organizations and has appeared in the media at several levels on various health related subjects. "It’s a struggle to be involved in these activities she said. She has a responsibility to do her job and her Board of Directors carefully watches what she does. But the eventual results and the inspiration from everyday people, especially those who have little, but still give of themselves, are almost priceless for her.

Doing good for others is what carries Clark from day-to day, and it is what her life is built upon. She feels there is something in this life for everyone; that you cannot only have a dream, but reach that dream. "The one thing I love about this job is that I have the ability to very often step out on faith with the understanding that everyone is worthy, and you need to step forward with love and love is an action word.

It was the love and the peace within her that brought Clark back home. When she took the position at Horizon NJ Health, which is located in West Trenton, very near where she grew up, she reconnected with First Baptist of Pennington, a little church over 100 years old where she worshipped as a child. There, she lives by and works from the words contained in Zechariah 4:6: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit."

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