Katy Armendariz, MSW, LICSW

Backstory

By Sue Coyle

As the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) occupation of Minnesota ramped up earlier this year, Katy Armendariz, MSW, LICSW, did not hesitate to step forward. Even now, after its peak—though it is ongoing—Armendariz is working to meet the needs of the community. 

 “We created a rapid response therapy line,” she says. “We have several bilingual immigrant clinicians who are answering phones. We’ve had people call us maybe after a loved one was abducted. We’ve had a 6-or 7-year-old whose mom was taken while they were holding hands.” Armendariz also has led employer-requested mental health groups, retrieved groceries, given rides to neighbors and more. 

This drive to help when, where and how it is needed most is representative of Armendariz’s career as a social worker. When Armendariz was born, she was placed into foster care and adopted into an “all-white family as the only person of color. My basic needs were met, but there is a lot of racial trauma that came from that—loss of culture, identity,community—and that is why I became a social worker.” 

After earning her MSW at the University of Minnesota, Armendariz worked in direct service but soon realized she wanted to do more. “I wanted to evolve to meet the need of the community,” she remembers. She founded Roots Wellness Center in St. Paul 12 years ago. “Roots started with the idea of having staff who live in the community, who represent the community—Black, Brown, queer—who speak the languages within our community,” she says. 

Roots’ services are culturally rooted, somatic and holistic. They include outpatient therapy, children’s mental health case management and pretrial court support, as well as in-home treatment to infants and their families when the infant is born with substances in their system. The center is the only organization in the state providing this type of intervention, Armendariz says. 

Roots received the Good Neighbor Award from St. Paul City Council in November 2025. Armendariz personally received the Outstanding Service Award from the Minnesota Association for Children’s Mental Health in October 2015, the Mid-Career Leader of the Year award from NASW-Minnesota in July 2022 and, most recently, the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Social Justice Award from NASW-Minnesota in March of this year. 

Armendariz credits her partner and three children with helping her stay balanced, as well as a reminder she received recently from an elder to look for the helpers. “There is always going to be evil and pain in the world,” she notes. “But this community is very, very resilient and strong.”