Dr. Stephanie Harris-Kuiper

As Executive Director, New Jersey Health Care Employers, District 1199J's Training and Development Fund... (Fund), Dr. Harris-Kuiper has been a pivotal leader since January 2000 in developing, marketing and administering career education and training programs for District 1199J Union membership, their families and the community at large within Essex, Union and Hudson counties.  

She holds a doctorate in social psychology and a master’s degree in counseling, and she is dually licensed as a Clinical Professional Counselor and Clinical Alcohol and Drug Therapist. She is also a nationally approved Clinical Supervisor.

Dr. Harris-Kuiper was the first North Jersey educator in 2008 to successfully market, implement and administer the Youth Transitions to Work (YTTW) Certified Nursing Assistant Apprenticeship, a registered Federal apprenticeship program in partnership with RWJ/Barnabas Medical Center.

In 2010, Dr. Harris-Kuiper petitioned the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Apprenticeship to have the occupation of Physical Therapy Aide included in the registered apprenticeship database. After 18 months of intensive consortium building, marketing the petition nationally to the healthcare community, and gaining the support of the New Jersey Board of Physical Therapists and Rutgers University, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, the PT Aide petition was officially registered, and became the first registered apprenticeship within physical therapy in the nation.

Dr. Harris-Kuiper has managed and coordinated from a variety of funding sources ten Physical Therapy Aide apprenticeship programs and fifteen nursing apprenticeships and successfully marketed the Training Fund’s apprenticeship programs to over 1,800 college-ready students in N.J. leading to over 150 healthcare apprenticeship job placements within nursing homes, major regional hospitals, and private practices.

In 2022, Dr. Harris-Kuiper formed a community partnership with the Newark Opportunity Youth Network, (NOYN) to recruit, educate, train, mentor and place both at-risk and out-of-school young adults into pre-apprenticeship programs and other training-to-work programs at the Training Fund. NOYN has become a powerful consortium partner and works with the Training Fund to recruit out-of-school youth and provide career mentorship.

Dr. Harris-Kuiper was also appointed in 2020 to the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Advisory Committee on Registered Apprenticeships, where she served on two subcommittees and was one of a total of 32 national representatives serving the U.S. Both subcommittees were designed to broaden marketing and recruitment strategies, increasing access for disadvantaged youth and hard-to reach populations. One subcommittee was designed specifically to look at ways to increase youth participation in registered apprenticeships across the United States. Serving on the committee was highly advantageous for the Training Fund, since Dr. Harris-Kuiper was able to learn firsthand from the U.S. Department of Labor about future national apprenticeship training initiatives specifically in the Northeast.

Lastly, she was Immunization Coordinator for the City of Newark’s Health Department and served on the City’s Ryan White HIV/AIDs Executive Committee. She currently serves on Rutgers University’s Alcohol Addiction Studies Committee.