A trailblazing female NYPD honcho has forged another new path for herself — as a mentor to teen girls who love to run like she does.
Nearly 30 high-school girls laced up for their first 5-K race Saturday in Harlem after weeks under the tutelage of Tania Kinsella, both the Police Department’s first female deputy commissioner and first black woman to hold the post.
Kinsella, a 43-year-old Bronx native, told The Post that mentoring the teens was about inspiring the next generation “to dream big and to do big things.
“When I was a young girl in The Bronx, I never thought my world would be outside The Bronx and with these girls — I feel like I see myself in them,” she said. “It’s important for these young girls to see people that look like them, that’s from where they’re from, that are in positions in city government and even private sectors.
“I don’t want to be the last woman of color and I don’t want to be the last woman to hold such a position in the city like this,” Kinsella said.
Roughly 5,000 runners — including Kinsella and her mentees — took their marks at the Percy Sutton 5K road race during the hot and humid Manhattan summer morning.
Kinsella mentored the 29 teens, a grab bag of athletes and running neophytes from The Bronx and other low-income neighborhoods, as an ambassador for the New York Road Runners Run for the Future program.
As a long-distance runner for seven years who has nearly 60 Road Runners races and multiple marathons under her belt, Kinsella said the program was a chance to share a “gift to her life.
“It was a no-brainer,” she said. “Coupled with running and mentoring — two things that I have passion for and love — it’s been amazing.”
Her group ran on a “buddy system,” with Kinsella pacing her match-up, 16-year-old Rukayat Tali, stride for stride.
In the final stretch of the race, Kinsella could be seen helping Rukayat off the pavement, clasping the teen runner’s hand in her own, and guiding the high-school student across the finish line.
Rukayat, who described the race’s hilly inclines of St. Nicholas Avenue as “really hard,” finished with a solid time of 29:56 and a pace per mile of 9:39.
“She was amazing,” Rukayat said of Kinsella. “She really did push me, and I appreciated her a lot.
“I did my best. — and that’s all that matters,” the teen said.
Angelica Gervais, 18, also trekked from Queens to Harlem for her first race.
“At the beginning of the program, I couldn’t run for 5 minutes straight without stopping and breathing so heavy,” she said. “But now look at me — I ran a 5K today.”
Gervais gushed over the example Kinsella set, too.
“She’s so bold and bright, and she shows young women that we can accomplish anything we want — anything we put our minds to,” Angelica said. “She showed us that, even though she started all the way from the bottom, look how she made it all the way to the top.”
The race, which is organized by the non-profit Road Runners, is named after another black trailblazer: Percy Sutton, a Harlem native, politician, lawyer, civil-rights activist and former Manhattan borough president who is widely credited with being one of the driving forces behind the New York City Marathon in 1976.
Saturday’s event coincided with the kick-off of the 50th anniversary of Harlem Week that Sutton also founded.
