Equity & Inclusion Speaker Series

Event Date: April 23, 2026

This event invites the social work community to take a critical look at how practicum (field) education across the profession can better support students with disabilities. Field placements are designed to be transformative learning experiences, yet accessibility practices vary widely across agencies and institutions. This session will explore how those differences shape students’ experiences and what it means to build more consistent, proactive approaches to inclusion in social work education. 

Dr. Kanako Okuda, assistant dean of Practicum (Field) Education and clinical associate professor at BU School of Social Work (BUSSW), will be joined by BUSSW MSW students Mia Parra and Miku Hayashida for a conversation grounded in both research and lived experience. Together, they will discuss how social work programs and community partners can strengthen practicum environments by centering disabled students’ voices and disability justice in the field. 

About the Speakers

Kanako Okuda, MSW, DSW

Dr. Kanako Okuda (she/her) is a social work educator, scholar, and practitioner. She serves as the assistant dean of Practicum Education and is a clinical associate professor at BUSSW. Dr. Okuda is passionate about practicum education and how students create meaning from their learning through service. She views practicum education as a crucial bridge connecting students, social work programs, and the communities they serve, striving to transform students’ experiences by employing innovative tools tailored to diverse learning strengths. Her collaborative research with practicum educators focuses on improving students’ practicum outcomes.

To address student anxiety, Dr. Okuda developed www.fieldanxiety.com, a widely adopted resource that helps students embrace vulnerability as a tool for growth. In 2020, she was selected as a Field Research Scholar by the Transforming Field Education Landscape (TFEL) Project at the University of Calgary, supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Dr. Okuda is also a founding member of the Practicum Education Directors; group of the “Voting Is Social Work” campaign, which mobilizes voter participation through practicum education.

As a practicing clinical social worker, Dr. Okuda serves hard-to-reach populations via telemental health services. She began her career in child welfare and later worked as a pediatric oncology social worker at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. Dr. Okuda holds a BSW from Lehman College, an MSW from Columbia University, and a DSW from Rutgers University. Her scholarship includes social justice, practicum education, and health social work.

Mia Parra

Parra is a BUSSW Master of Social Work student focusing on macro practice. As someone who is legally blind, she brings lived experience into her professional work in disability services, inclusion training, and community-based programming.

Miku Hayashida

Hayashida is a BUSSW Master of Social Work student. As a wheelchair user and as a social worker, she is deeply passionate about being an advocate for marginalized communities, especially disabled people. She values her lived experiences in the U.S. and Japan which gives her a cross-cultural perspective. 

Event Date: Feb. 26, 2026

This BUSSW Equity & Inclusion Speaker Series event explores Forest Therapy as a practice of collective, justice-oriented care. Participants reflected on how land, listening, and relationship shape healing and belonging. Rather than treating nature as a resource, Forest Therapy offers a way of being with the land rooted in reciprocity, presence, and care.

Grounded in ancestral ways of knowing and trauma-informed, equity-focused practice, the session considers how access to land, rest, and healing has been shaped by history and systemic inequities. Through guided reflection and dialogue, participants will explore their own relationships to care—how it is given, received, and held within communities and systems—while learning how Forest Therapy can support collective healing in times of grief, burnout, and change.

Featured Speaker: 

Andrea Jaramillo (she/they) is a certified Forest Therapy Guide and founder of Forest Nurse. Her work approaches nature-based practice as collective, justice-oriented care, centering Forest Therapy through a relational and equity-focused lens while honoring ancestral ways of knowing and caring. Informed by her background as a registered nurse in labor and delivery, hospice, and maternal–infant public health, she invites reflection on access to land, rest, healing, grief-tending, belonging, and how we care and are cared for within our communities and systems.

Event Date: Jan. 22, 2026

Watch this compelling session in the BUSSW Speakers Series featuring Cecilia Guerrero, chair of A Luta Sigue, a movement incubator dedicated to supporting the creation and development of autonomous power-building projects and campaigns led by working-class leaders and youth in Tennessee. Since A Luta Sigue was founded, the organization has supported the development of three main projects:

1) The Tennessee Drivers Union, which is the largest Uber/Lyft rideshare union in the South, representing over 400 rideshare drivers from over a dozen nationalities

2) Poder Popular; an organization representing over 600 immigrant families with ties to the construction, manufacturing and hospitality industries

3) The Southern Youth Solidarity Network, a youth-led organization aiming to bring young people into the working-class movement. This talk will highlight the importance of class-based organizing, including an emphasis on class interests, class politics, and organizing any issue within a capitalist structure.  

A Luta Sigue’s mission is focused on “a world in which our people— Black, Indigenous, Brown, queer, and trans working-class people— can define their own destinies and enjoy long, dignified lives. We believe that for our movements to succeed, working-class people must form strong, resilient, and democratic organizations that can seize power to transform their conditions. Our movement needs more organizations of this kind, along with the leaders who can build and lead them.”

Featured Speaker: 

Cecelia Guerrero is the chair and a founding member of A Luta Sigue, an organization that identifies working-class leaders and progressive youth and trains them to lead their own collective struggles. A third-generation organizer from Mexico, Guerrero has over a decade of experience in the labor movement with a particular focus on organizing immigrant workers.  

Event Date: Nov. 13, 2025

Antisemitism is one of the oldest and most enduring forms of prejudice and hate, yet in this current historical moment, it is often misunderstood, minimized, or weaponized. For social workers, whose professional mandate is to advance equity, justice, and human dignity, developing a clear and nuanced understanding of antisemitism—what it is and what it is not—is essential. This program will offer a structured space to examine antisemitism both as a historical phenomenon and as a contested concept within today’s global community.  

Join us as an experienced panel of scholars explores the historical roots of antisemitism, tracing how it has evolved over time and continues to shape public discourse. We will discuss how to differentiate between legitimate critiques of governmental policies and harmful rhetoric or actions that perpetuate antisemitic ideas. The program will also highlight the work of Concerned Jewish Faculty and Staff, who are actively engaged in addressing antisemitism while building bridges across movements for social change. 

This BUSSW Equity & Inclusion Speaker Series will also consider how antisemitism intersects with other forms of oppression, including racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, while also acknowledging its unique characteristics. By situating antisemitism within both intersectional and distinct frameworks, we invite participants to deepen their understanding of its impact in professional, academic, and community contexts.  

Featured Speaker: Margaret Litvin, Associate Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature, Boston University

Featured Speaker: Adam B. Seligman, Professor of Religion, Boston University 

Featured Speaker: Frances Tanzer, the Rose Professor of Holocaust Studies and Jewish Culture, Clark University  

Event Date: April 24, 2025

Please contact swequity@bu.edu for a link to the recording.

Understanding the structural factors that shape health outcomes is essential to advancing health equity. Join the BUSSW E&I Committee and featured speaker Alyssa Benalfew-Ramos, MPH (SPH’19) for an interactive workshop exploring how social, political, and commercial determinants of health operate independently and collectively to shape health inequities.

Participants will examine case studies that illustrate the real-world impact of these forces—from discriminatory housing policies to corporate influence on food systems and environmental health—while exploring strategies for integrating this knowledge into social work advocacy, education, and direct practice.

Featured Speaker: Alyssa Benalfew-Ramos, MPH – Chief of Policy, Black Economic Council of Massachusetts (BECMA)

Alyssa Benalfew-Ramos (she/hers) is a public policy professional and public health practitioner dedicated to advancing health equity and economic justice. As chief of policy at the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts (BECMA), she leads statewide advocacy efforts to build prosperity in Black communities. Previously, she worked at the Boston Public Health Commission, implementing racial equity initiatives and managing federal grants focused on youth, substance use, and violence prevention. Benalfew-Ramos holds a Master of Public Health in Health Policy & Law from Boston University and a BA in Political Philosophy & Public Policy from UMass Boston. She is also an online course facilitator at BUSSW.

Event Date: February 27, 2025

Recording coming soon!

The mental health of Muslims in the US is often affected by targeted state violence of their communities domestically, and globally. The genocide in Palestine is no exception. HEART is a national nonprofit working to promote sexual health, uproot gendered violence, and advance reproductive justice for the most impacted Muslims in the United States. In this E&I Speaker Series event, featured speaker Sahar Pirzada explored Palestine as a global reproductive justice issue and HEART’s mental health community based programs for individuals impacted by such ongoing violence.

Featured Speaker: Sahar Pirzada, Director of Movement Building at HEART

Sahar Pirzada is a Pakistani American Muslim woman who grew up in the South Bay Area of California and currently lives on Tongva land in Los Angeles with her family. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Development Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master of Social Work from the University of Southern California. She is the director of Movement Building for HEART where she explores the intersections of gendered islamophobia, reproductive justice, and abolition. She is also the co-author of the Reproductive Agency Honoring Impacted Muslims (RAHIM) project, which provides a reproductive justice framework that is grounded in Islam. Pirzada’s work with HEART has been featured in Teen Vogue, Now This, NPR, Fusion’s Sex Right Now, the #GoodMuslimBadMuslim Podcast and at the People’s Choice Awards 2022.

Event Date: Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025

How do we move from a human-centered worldview to one that places us within the world that we share with the whole community of life? In our January 2025 event, Sister Sharon Zayac, OP, co-founder of Jubilee Farm, discusses how this shift in worldview requires us to learn to think and speak inclusively of creation and acknowledge that who we are and all that we do are intimately interconnected with the whole.

Zayac explores the idea that our role as humans is to co-create a world where the whole of life might flourish, positing that no one flourishes unless all do, and that this can be the work of both science and faith. She also discusses how understanding our evolutionary story as a scientific and spiritual journey offers us both promise and hope, and how the crises we currently face are opportunities to create the kind of world we want to inhabit.

Speaker: Sister Sharon Zayac, OP

Sharon Zayac is a Dominican Sister and an internationally known thought leader on the interconnection of ecology and spirituality. She is co-founder of Jubilee Farm, her congregation’s 164-acre center for ecology and spirituality in Springfield, Illinois. Zayac holds degrees in secondary education and hospital administration, as well as a master’s degree in earth literacy from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana. She is an advocate, writer, public speaker and retreat leader, and is particularly interested in the cosmic creation story and our evolving consciousness, and their implications for life and faith.

Moderator & Reflectors

• Moderator: Debra Berglin, MSW
• Faculty Reflector: Tami Gouveia, PhD
• Alumni Reflector: Micheal Novak
  

Speaker: Dr. Iain Ferguson

Date: Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024

In the December 2024 E&I Speaker Series event, Dr. Iain Ferguson explores the themes of his book, Politics of the Mind: Marxism and Mental Distress, which challenges dominant biomedical models of mental distress and argues that the roots of the current mental health crisis lie in neoliberal capitalism more than in our brains and genes.

Dr. Iain Ferguson is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and several books including Reclaiming Social Work: Challenging Neoliberalism and Promoting Social Justice (2008), Radical Social Work in Practice (with Rona Woodward, 2009), Global Social Work in a Political Context: Radical Perspectives (with Michael Lavalette and Vasilios Ioakimidis, 2018) and Politics of the Mind: Marxism and Mental Distress (2nd ed., 2023). He is a founder-member of the Social Work Action Network (SWAN), past founder/co-editor and current advisory editor of Critical and Radical Social Work: An International Journal, and a member of the editorial board of International Socialism Journal.

Dr. Ferguson is a long-standing socialist and anti-racist activist and worked as a social and community worker for many years in the West of Scotland before moving into social work education in the early 1990s. He taught at both Paisley University and Stirling University and, prior to his retirement, was a professor of social work and social policy at the University of the West of Scotland.

Speaker: Brandon Rothrock

Date: Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024

In this BUSSW E&I Speaker Series event, geographer Brandon Rothrock discusses the intersection of LGBTQIA+ livelihoods and public health in the context of climate change. Rothrock explores how disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, and other extreme weather events, existing social and environmental inequities for the LGBTQIA+ community, and challenges dominant narratives around disaster preparedness and response.

1 Massachusetts CE credit was available to social workers licensed in the U. S. upon successful completion of a post-event quiz.

Featured Speaker:

Brandon Rothrock (he/him) is a second-year geography PhD student at Ohio State University, where he focuses on LGBTQIA+ livelihoods and energy transition in Appalachia. Rothrock is also an Agents of Change in Environmental Justice fellow through Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and Environmental Health News, and is a board member for OUT for Sustainability (OUT4S), a queer-led nonprofit that focuses on climate resilience and environmental justice by and for the LGBTQIA+ community.

Speaker: Husain Rizvi & Emy Takinami

Date: Thursday, April 25, 2024

Get an inside look at an ongoing campaign in Boston to launch non-police, non-carceral, community-based mental health crisis response model.

In this BUSSW Equity & Inclusion Speaker Series event, two of the campaign’s organizers – Husain Rizvi and Emy Takinami (MSW’20), a BU School of Social Work alum – discuss the history of the campaign within the greater context of the abolition movement in Boston.  They share details about the proposed non-police, non-carceral, community-based model they are working on, as well as the current status of the campaign and how social workers and others in the Greater Boston area can  support it.

1 Massachusetts social work CE credit was offered for this event.

Featured Speakers: 

Husain Rizvi (they/them) is the director for the Pathways to Change Program and co-director for the Summer Leadership Program at The City School, a youth organizing and leadership development organization that focuses on supporting Black and brown working class youth in Boston bydeveloping young people’s leadership through popular education, collective care and transformative justice, political education, and organizing 101. They are a steering committee member of the Mental Health Crisis Response campaign where they support young people in organizing.

Emy Takinami (she/her) is the racial justice policy and community engagement manager at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. As a macro social worker and community organizer, she is committed to building and fostering grassroots power toward community-led social change. She is a steering committee member of Boston Liberation Health (BLH), a group of social workers dedicated to understanding and practicing social work using the Liberation Health framework which is a model of radical mental health practice that helps individuals identify and analyze the sociopolitical factors affecting our lives and take action to change our external world. Through her work with BLH, and in partnership with The City School, she also serves as a steering committee member of Boston’s Mental Health Crisis Response campaign, organizing for non-police, non-carceral, community-based mental health crisis response for the City of Boston.

Speaker: Vasilios Ioakimidis

Date: Thursday, February 29, 2024

Event Description

Social work is defined as a profession seeking social justice, social change, and the empowerment and liberation of people, but the historical reality is a profession blighted by complicity and the perpetuation of oppression in the face of state coercion and control. Examining this complicated history can provide hope for social change and justice.

Prof. Vasilios Ioakimidis, PhD, presents examples from around the world that explore, highlight, and analyze historical and current complicity and resistance in social work in an effort to inspire liberation, empowerment, social change, healing, and peace. His lecture covers case studies of complicity and resistance from Nazi Germany, Franco’s fascist Spain, Colonial and Apartheid South Africa, Chile, Palestine, Australia, Canada, Ireland, England, and Cyprus, as well as examples of social work practice in children’s services, adoption, systemic inequality, and mental health services.

Speaker

Vasilios Ioakimidis is a professor of social work whose publications focus on the broad theme of social work theory and practice under extreme socio-political circumstances. He is affiliated with the University of West Attica, Greece; the University of Essex, UK; and the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He also serves as the global education commissioner in the International Federation of Social Workers; and he is co-editor of the British Journal of Social Work.

Speaker: Julian Agyeman, PhD, FRSA, FRGS

Date: Thursday, January 25, 2024

Event Description

In this BUSSW Equity & Inclusion Speaker Series event, sustainability expert Julian Agyeman discusses how his increasingly influential concept of just sustainabilities – the intentional integration of social justice and environmental sustainability – responds to the “equity deficit” present in much of the current sustainability thinking and practice. Agymen explores his contention that the individuals who can belong in our cities ultimately determine what our cities can become, and illustrate his ideas with examples from urban planning and design, food justice, and the ‘Minneapolis Paradox.’

Speaker

Julian Agyeman is a professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University. The originator of the concept of just sustainabilities – the intentional integration of social justice and environmental sustainability – he centers his research on critical explorations of the complex and embedded relations between humans and the urban environment and their effects on public policy and planning processes and outcomes, particularly in relation to justice and equity.

Moderator & Reflectors

Moderator: Julia DeAngelo is a second-year MSW student at BU, where she focuses on liberatory, anti-oppressive practice, research, and policy, and is a research assistant for the BUSSW Equity & Inclusion Committee. Julia has worked as a public health researcher, a mental health service provider, and a program evaluator. She is also a bike commuter and passionate about pushing environmental efforts to center equity.

Student Reflector: Marcus Shaw is a first-year MSW student at BU, where he also works as an undergraduate academic advisor for the Sociology Department and the African American & Black Diaspora Studies Program. He is a research assistant for the BUSSW Equity & Inclusion Committee, practices meditation coaching and reiki healing, and is interested in psychoanalysis.

Alumni Reflector: Ashley Shen is a 2023 graduate of BUSSW’s MSW program. She is a therapist and facilitator whose work centers the emotional and political realities of people of color. She holds a B.A. from Tufts University with a focus in ethnic studies and clinical psychology. Prior to BUSSW, Ashley worked with immigrant workers, tenants, and survivors through the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence and Chinese Progressive Association. She is committed to uplifting the voices of community members in the decisions that affect their lives.

Speaker: Greer Hamilton, PhD

Date: Thursday, December 14, 2023

Event Description

Although Black, Indigenous, disabled, and other marginalized activists have stated for years that Roe v. Wade was not enough to protect people’s reproductive rights, it wasn’t until the 2022 Dobbs decision that broader attention to reproductive rights and calls for reproductive justice resurfaced in mainstream dialogue. Since then, many social work institutions and practitioners have urged those in the field to consider reproductive justice a crucial component of their social justice mission. However, they often overlook the profession’s historical ties to eugenic practice and the continued policing of people’s bodies.

This event focuses on how social workers have contributed to reproductive oppression and identify opportunities for them to incorporate reproductive justice into their practice and personal lives.

Speaker

Greer Hamilton, PhD (she/her) is a transitional postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. Her work focuses on examining how systems of oppression are embedded into the built environment and subsequently impact people’s health, well-being, and use of public spaces. She began her research career as a research assistant for Dr. Gretchen Ely who studied how far people had to travel for an abortion prior to the overturning of Roe. She is a board member for the Midwest Access Coalition and formerly the co-chair of the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund.

Moderator & Reflectors

Moderator: Eleanor “Ellie” Zambrano, MSW, LICSW, is a social work leader with 25 years of experience and Executive Director of the Center for Innovation in Social Work and Health and BUSSW Equity and Inclusion Committee member since 2020. Ellie is a leader in driving innovation and advancement in both clinical and macro practices that prioritize health equity, social justice, and anti-racism.

Faculty Reflector: Jennifer M. Gómez, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Clinical Practice Department in the School of Social Work and faculty affiliate at the Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health at Boston University, as well as a board member and chair of the Research Advisory Committee at the Center for Institutional Courage. Her research centers around cultural betrayal trauma theory, which she created to examine the impact of violence on Black and other marginalized youth, young adults, and elders within the context of inequality. Her book, The Cultural Betrayal of Black Women & Girls: A Black Feminist Approach to Healing from Sexual Abuse, centers Black women and girls to understand sexual abuse and healing, while identifying strategies for transforming the world into a more peaceful and equitable place.

Student Reflector: Amanda Washington (she/her) is a first year student at Boston University pursuing dual degrees in social work and education. Prior to her arrival at Boston University, she worked as a high school Spanish teacher and in undergraduate admissions. She is deeply passionate about both social work and education and hopes to pursue a career at the intersection of these fields in the future.

Speaker: Linda Ducca

Date: Thursday, October 19, 2023

Event Description

As right wing extremists’ ideas and actions become more common and endanger people’s rights, social theater techniques and methodologies can help raise awareness about the inequalities and injustices of the system we live in. This presentation will explore the link between social theater and social work, and how social theater methodology promotes collective well-being and critical awareness. Featured speaker Linda Ducca will give a brief overview of the roots of social theater, examine the historical use of theater as a methodology in social work, and discuss the broader meaning of social theater today in practice, education, and research.

Speaker

Linda Ducca, PhD, is assistant professor at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). She holds a PhD in Social Work, a master’s degree in Research Methods and Techniques applied to Social Work, and a bachelor’s degree in Social Work (UCM). Prof. Ducca is a founding member of Grupolab and a committee member of the International Association for Social Work with Groups (IASWG). Her research focuses on youth, participation, social theater, social intervention, and social work with groups. In addition to her publications, she has presented to Congress about social theater and social work. She is not an actress, but has been practicing social theater for more than 10 years.

Moderators & Reflectors

Moderator: Dawn Belkin Martinez, PhD, LICSW

Dawn Belkin Martinez is a clinical professor and associate dean of equity and inclusion at the Boston University School of Social Work, where she coordinates the clinical practice with families sequence. Formerly the chief social worker on the inpatient psychiatry service at Children’s Hospital in Boston and an instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, she has nearly 30 years of experience as a scholar, clinical social worker, and activist in the movement for our collective liberation.

Student Reflector: Sarah Amkieh

Sarah Amkieh is a Syrian American 2nd year clinical student at BUSSW. They grew up in Louisiana and attended Tulane University for undergrad where they studied political science and gender studies and then lived in San Diego before coming to Boston to pursue their master’s. They are deeply passionate about social justice and radical liberation for all marginalized groups and hope to pursue clinical and macro work in line with these passions. And on a less serious note, they have an adorable orange cat named Taz!

Alumni Reflector: Malaka Mims

Malaka Mims, an alum of the BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, is a licensed independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) who operates a private practice in Brockton, Mass. She provides therapy, advocacy, workshops, and consultation, all rooted in her unwavering dedication to social work and positive change. She also teaches MSW courses at BUSSW with a focus on ethics, racial justice, clinical practice, and mental health policy. Recently, she has ventured into podcasting, facilitating impactful discussions on vital topics.

Faculty Reflector: Donna McLaughlin

Donna McLaughlin is a clinical associate professor at BUSSW and is known for her expertise in social work practice with groups and individuals, behavioral health and trauma. Her interests include supervising and mentoring students and new workers, and community training in group work, trauma, living with chronic illness, and work with the LGBTQ+ community. She is also a clinician/consultant in private practice.

Speaker: Jessica Kant

Date: Thursday, September 28, 2023

Event Description

In reaction to the enormous strides made by the trans liberation movement, a counter-campaign has grown exponentially in opposition, using transgender people as a political wedge issue. Having gone from invisibility to hypervisibility, trans people are thrust into the public landscape, their lives and bodies debated nightly on news programs and in legislatures. In the past several years, hundreds of bills have been proposed targeting transgender people, with an emphasis on pediatric gender-affirming care. With each enacted policy, politicians and their donors grow bolder in their efforts to drive transgender people out of public life.

This BUSSW Equity & Inclusion Speaker Series event featuring speaker Jessica Kant will explore how the attack on trans lives is increasingly taking place within the fields of medicine and social work, with social workers in particular being forced to either participate in anti-trans actions or actively resist. Participants will gain insight into  the world that trans people are living in, both in the present and through history, and learn ways to identify and decode anti-trans messaging, and challenge anti-trans policies and activities within their institutions.

Featured Speaker

Jessica Kant is a Boston-based clinical social worker and researcher who specializes in working with transgender and nonbinary clients. She has been a practicing psychotherapist for twelve years and is currently part of a multidisciplinary team supporting transgender people through the surgical process, including identifying and accessing their embodiment goals. Outside of clinical practice, she is a part-time lecturer at the BU School of Social Work and an analyst on a mixed-methods study at Boston Children’s Hospital examining the effects of the social and political climate on transgender youth and their families.

Moderators & Reflectors

Moderator: Daniel P. Miller, PhD

Daniel Miller, PhD, is an associate professor of social welfare policy, and Director of the PhD program at the Boston University School of Social Work. His research focuses on the ways in which policies can promote the health and well-being of children and families.

Reflectors:

• Student reflector Neha Bhagat (she/her) is a second-year clinical MSW student at Boston University. With a focus on Asian and Asian American communities, Neha’s involvement in suicide prevention and health equity spaces led her to pursue the field of social work to deeper explore the effectiveness of evidence-based interventions in addressing intersectionality. Whichever path comes next, she aims to take it with compassion, empathy, and patience above all.
• Alumni reflector Mahlet Meshesha, MSW, LCSW, MPH (she/her) is a trauma-informed, public health social worker with a passion for improving working conditions and workplace culture. She is currently a program evaluator at the Boston Public Health Commission. Mahlet is also a steering committee member of the Boston Liberation Health group. 
• Faculty reflector Chloe Frankel (she/they), LICSW, is a full-time lecturer at BUSSW and also works with youth, adults, and families as a community-based therapist. Chloe is a member of the Boston Liberation Health Group’s Steering Committee and believes that none of us are free until all of us are free. Queer and trans liberation now!

Speaker: Isabel Alvardado Dees

Date: Thursday, April 27, 2023

Event Description

Social workers engage with mental health on a daily basis. However, conversations about how mental health intersects with disability are less common. In this BUSSW Equity & Inclusion Speaker Series event, guest speaker Isabel Alvarado Dees leads a discussion about supporting people with disabilities in your daily practice. The conversation focuses on accommodations, universal design, and changing the language we use to discuss disability and mental health.

Featured Speaker

Isabel Alvarado Dees is an educational rights advocate with more than ten years of experience working in compliance in higher education. She identifies as a member of the disabled community which informs her holistic approach to meaningful inclusion through agency models of service and transformative justice principles.

Moderators & Reflectors

• Moderator: Eleanor Zambrano, MSW, LICSW
• Student Reflector: Riana Howard, MSW
• Faculty Reflector: Bethlyn Vergo Houlihan, MSW, MPH
• Alumni Reflector: Daniel Do, MSW, MPH (PhD’24)

Speakers: Javier Garcia-Perez, PhD Candidate, UCLA

Date: Thursday, February 23, 2023

Event Description

Queer Latinx individuals live in a complex fabric of intersecting structures of oppression including, but not limited to, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, poverty, citizenship status, internalized homophobia, internalized racism and linguistic hierarchy. They are required to navigate complex identities that are often not understood or adequately researched, and we don’t have a clear understanding of how they navigate their identities in relation to the structures of oppression. 

In this Equity & Inclusion Speaker Series event, featured speaker Javier Garcia-Perez discusses current issues facing the queer Latinx community, findings from his 2020 pilot study with queer Latinx individuals, and where we go from here. 

Featured Speaker

Javier Garcia-Perez is a PhD candidate in social welfare at UCLA. An interdisciplinary, intersectional and community-centered researcher, he is focused on improving quality of life for the queer Latinx community across their life span, and uses his lived experience as a first-generation bilingual queer Latinx social worker to inform his research. Garcia-Perez earned his BA in Chicana/o Studies from UC Davis, an MA in Sociocultural Anthropology from Columbia University, and a combined MS in Nonprofit Leadership and MSW from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice.

Moderator & Reflectors

• Moderator: Ashley Shen
• Student Reflector: Julia DeAngelo
• Faculty Reflector: Daniel Jacobson López
• Alumni Reflector: Sonia Mee

Speaker: Dimitra-Dora Teloni, Assistant Professor, University of West Attica

Date: Thursday, January 26, 2023

Event Description

Is it possible for social work to survive and promote social justice in the context of neoliberal universities and social services? In our January Equity & Inclusion Speaker Series event, social work professor and activist Dimitra-Dora Teloni attempts to answer this question by presenting specific examples of resistance in day-to-day practice, social movement coalitions, and ways to support frontline social workers.

Featured Speaker

Dimitra-Dora Teloni is an assistant professor in the Social Work Department at the University of West Attica, Greece. Her published work and research interests focus on radical social work, refugees, antiracism and social movements.

Moderator & Reflectors

• Moderator: Dawn Belkin Martinez, PhD, LICSW
• Student Reflector: Ari Zimmet
• Faculty Reflector: Chloe Frankel, MSw, LICSW
• Alumni Reflector: Emy Takinami

Speakers: Jean Yu-wen Wu, PhD

Date: Thursday, December 15, 2022

Event Description

Asian American mental wellbeing received public attention in the US amid the widespread pandemic-related upsurge of anti-Asian violence. However, this fleeting and incomplete awareness of their continuing lived reality has not resulted in substantive action by the practitioners and educators that care for them. In this presentation, featured speaker Jean Yu-wen Wu and the BUSSW Equity & Inclusion Committee discuss the futility of addressing Asian/Asian American (un)wellness without contending with the erasure of the impact of (neo)colonialism and racial capitalism in shaping Asian/Asian American experiences and psyches.

Featured Speaker

Jean Yu-wen Wu, PhD, professor emerita at Tufts University, is a scholar, educator, and practitioner in critical race studies, anti-colonial Asian/Asian American diaspora studies, decolonization of research methodologies, community-based activism, and critical pedagogy.

Moderator & Reflectors

• Moderator: Ashley Shen (MSW student)
• Student Reflector: Katie Mai
• Faculty Reflector: Daniel P. Miller
• Alumni Reflector: Nihaarika Sharma

Speakers: Amatullah Mervin & Tara Venkatraman

Date: Thursday, October 27, 2022

Event Description

In this political moment, and throughout this country’s history, Black young people and young people of color are on the forefront of insurgent social movements for justice. However, youth are also experiencing the repercussions of devastating racial and police violence and ongoing governmental neglect—in ways that have indelible impacts on their mental health.

Join Amatullah Mervin (STH’22) and Tara Venkatraman for an important discussion on strategies for activism and organizing rooted in collective care, and ways in which activism, organizing and political education themselves can be mental health care practices. The speakers will also share their research on how the mental health of Black youth and youth of color is impacted by political education and organizing work as they offer best practices for mental health practitioners, social workers, organizers, and youth workers.

Continuing Education Credits: 1 continuing education credit will be available to social workers licensed in Massachusetts upon successful completion of a brief quiz. If you would like to receive continuing education credits, please provide your license number during registration.

This event is co-sponsored by BUSSW’s Clinical Practice and Macro Practice departments.

Featured Speakers

Amatullah Mervin (STH’22) – Executive Director, The City School

Amatullah Mervin (she/hers) is a Boston-Cambridge, Massachusetts native. She is experienced in youth and community organizing, social justice program development and organizational leadership. As a youth and community organizer for 10+ years, her work has placed her at the center of supporting youth by recognizing their power and using that power to fight for liberation in grassroots movements. She has successfully worked on numerous campaigns both in the city of Boston and around the nation including Youthway on the MBTA, ending Stop-and-Frisk in New York City, and the work to dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Mervin describes herself as a lover of people, travel, good food, culture and difficult conversations around justice, equity and the fight to dismantle oppression for Black youth especially. Her “sheroes” include Fannie Lou Hamer, Assata Shakur and Ella Baker, and she models much of her work after their ideology and methodology. She holds a B.A. in Sociology and a Masters in Theological Studies from Boston University.

Tara Venkatraman – Director of Programs and Strategy, The City School

Tara Deviki Venkatraman (she/hers) is the director of programs and strategy at The City School, and a youth worker, organizer, political educator and therapist. She has been rooted in Boston-area racial justice youth organizing for almost fifteen years, and has worked at The City School since 2011, where she supports political education, leadership development, and organizing work with young people and young adults of color. Venkatraman is also on the steering committee for a partnership between The City School and Boston Liberation Health that aims to design a community-based mental health response for the City of Boston that does not involve the police. She has organized with Youth Justice and Power Union in their campaign to defund the police and reinvest in youth jobs and community needs, and she has a therapy practice focused on young adults and adults of color. She is committed to building out mental health, collective care and transformative justice practices within communities of color and organizing spaces.

Moderator & Reflectors

• Moderator: Linda Sprague Martinez
• Faculty Reflector: Daniel Jacobson López
• MSW Student Reflector: Orion Ojala
• Alumni Reflector: Emy Takinami (SSW’20)

Speaker: Alan J. Dettlaff, PhD

Date: Thursday, September 29, 2022

Event Description

The child welfare system, in its current state, disproportionately harms Black, Indigenous, and Latinx children and families through systemic surveillance, separation, and the adverse outcomes associated with family separation and foster care. Ending this harm will only be achieved when the forcible separation of children from their parents is no longer viewed as an acceptable form of intervention.

In this Equity & Inclusion Speaker Series event, we will discuss the movement to abolish the child welfare system and the broader need for the social work profession to align its practices with its stated values and ethical principles.

Featured Speaker

Alan J. Dettlaff, PhD, is dean of the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston and the inaugural Maconda Brown O’Connor Endowed Dean’s Chair. Prior to entering academia, Dean Dettlaff worked in the child welfare system as a caseworker and an administrator. He received his bachelor’s degree in social work from TCU, and master’s in social work and PhD from the University of Texas at Arlington. Dean Dettlaff’s work focuses on addressing and eliminating the impacts of structural and institutional racism on Black children and other children of color impacted by child welfare system intervention. He is co-founder of the upEND Movement, a collaborative movement that seeks to end the involuntary separation of children from their parents through abolition of foster care and the child welfare system.

Moderator & Reflectors

• Moderator: Dawn Belkin Martinez, PhD, Clinical Professor and Associate Dean for Equity & Inclusion, BUSSW
• Student Reflector: Noor Toraif, Doctoral Candidate and Lecturer, BUSSW
• Faculty Reflector: Linda Sprague Martinez, PhD, Associate Professor, BUSSW
• Alumni Reflector: Maya Milic-Strkalj, Family Therapist, Arbour Counseling Services; Boston Liberation Health Group Steering Committee Member; Lecturer, BUSSW

Speaker: Sophia Sarantakos, PhD

Date: Thursday, April 28, 2022

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Event Description

The convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic with the enduring issue of racist state violence has thrust the word “abolition” into the arena of professionalized U.S. social work more so in the past two years than at any other time. Although social change workers with an abolitionist politic are not a new phenomenon, discussions on the need for – and potential and friction of – “abolitionist social work” have increased dramatically since 2020. If professionalized social work is to shift to an abolitionist praxis, this is work that can only be done collectively. To that end, this talk will offer thoughts, not answers, as Dr. Joy James would say. In this presentation, the speaker will ground the audience in the definition and core tenets of prison-industrial complex abolition, query the profession’s stated values through an abolitionist lens, and share their thoughts on clear-eyed political actions that practitioners, researchers, educators, and schools of social work can take if they truly intend to reach for an abolitionist horizon.

Featured Speaker

Sophia Sarantakos, PhD, is a researcher and professor focused on contributing to the advancement of community-based approaches to harm and need, as well as exploring the future of social change work. Sarantakos leads the prison-industrial complex (PIC) abolition workgroup for the American Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare’s Promote Smart Decarceration Grand Challenge, which organizes and collaborates with other legal systems-focused scholars to increase social work’s understanding of PIC abolition, and its alignment with social work values and ethics. Along with teaching the foundation course “Integrated Social Work Practice for Social Justice,” Sarantakos teaches an “Introduction to PIC Abolition” course for MSW students.

Post-Event Resources

• Transform Harm resource hub (great info on transformative justice and PIC abolition): transformharm.org
• PIC abolition resource guide compiled by Micah Herskind: micahherskind.com/abolition-resource-guide
• Don’t Call The Police (resources by city): dontcallthepolice.com
• Mandated Supporting: jmacforfamilies.org/mandated-supporting
• Mandatory Reporting is Not Neutral: mandatoryreportingisnotneutral.com
• Interrupting Criminalization: interruptingcriminalization.com
• Abolitionist Social Change Collective: Email this address to get connected

Speaker: Natasha M. Lee-Johnson

Date: Thursday, February 17, 2022

Event Description

This presentation focuses on the reproductive health crisis among Black women, especially those with disabilities, by exploring the links between disability, race, and gender and structural barriers to reproductive justice in the United States. Focusing on strategies for social workers, healthcare providers, researchers, and educators, the talk will highlight ways to create change in pursuit of reproductive justice for Black women.

Featured Speaker

Natasha M. Lee-Johnson is a doctoral social work student at Louisiana State University studying sexuality and reproductive health among Black women with disabilities. She has served in several leadership roles supporting health equity for women and people with disabilities, and was named a RWJF Health Policy Research Scholar in 2021. In addition, she has held two fellowships within the Association of University Centers on Disability Network. Lee-Johnson is driven by her personal connections to disability justice, and professional observations and engagements with reproductive healthcare systems.

Speaker: Incoming BUSSW faculty member Jennifer M. Gómez

Date: Thursday, January 27, 2022

Event Description

Featured Speaker

Jennifer M. Gómez, Ph.D. of the Center for Institutional Courage is a 2021-22 CASBS Fellow at Stanford University and incoming Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work at Boston University. Her research in cultural betrayal trauma theory (CBTT) regarding the impact of violence on Black and other marginalized populations has been recognized by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Ford Foundation, and others.

Speaker: Carolyn Chou, Executive Director of Asian American Resource Workshop

Date: Thursday, December 16, 2021

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Event Description

Featured Speaker

Carolyn Chou (she/her) is the Executive Director of the Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW), where she supports the leadership development and organizing around issues of racial, economic, and social justice of a diverse base of progressive Asian Americans, primarily young adults. Through her work at AARW, Carolyn has supported building the leadership capacity and organizing of Vietnamese American young adults in Dorchester, the heart of the Vietnamese community in Boston. Alongside the young adult organizers, Carolyn has helped build the Dorchester Not for Sale formation in the neighborhood, which brings together a diverse set of neighborhood residents to fight for good jobs, truly affordable housing, and equitable planning.

Speaker: Dr. Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean of BU School of Law

Date: Thursday, December 2, 2021

Event Description

The murder of George Floyd ignited large protests against racialized police brutality and across the globe during the summer of 2020. Led by millennials and Generation Z—the two most racially and ethnically diverse generations in the nation’s history—the racial equity protests that occurred resulted in reforms that had previously seemed unimaginable. Indeed, many scholars pondered what forces had helped to enable those protests to emerge and take effect.

In a special lecture co-sponsored by the Equity & Inclusion Committee and hosted by BUSSW’s Online MSW Program, Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig of the BU School of Law seeks to answer that question, contending that the protests and their successes were facilitated, in part, by the combination of two factors: Critical Race Theory and social media.

Speakers: Melisa Campana Alabarce & Gianinna Muñoz-Arce

Date: Thursday, October 28, 2021

Event Description

This event was part of a joint effort between Boston University School of Social Work, Boston College School of Social Work, and the Grand Challenges for Social Work to celebrate and discuss topics related to Hispanic Heritage Month.

Featured Speakers

Melisa Campana Alabarce currently works as an associated researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and as a principal professor of social work at the National University of Rosario, Argentina. She leads the Research Centre in Governmentality and State and is a member of the Argentine Welfare Research Network (RAIAS). She is also editor-in-chief of the Cátedra Paralela Journal. During the last decade, her research and teaching activity has been focused on social work, social policy, welfare, government of the poor and neoliberalism.

Gianinna Muñoz-Arce, PhD, is a social worker from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of Chile. She is the coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Work Research Cluster and the editor-in-chief of the journal Propuestas Críticas en Trabajo Social – Critical Proposals in Social Work. In addition to her publications in Spanish, she has recently published articles in British Journal of Social Work, European Journal of Social Work, and Critical Social Policy. She is a member of the Chilean Social Work Research Network and the Social Work Action Network.

Speaker: Tarso Luís Ramos

Date: Thursday, September 30, 2021

Supplemental materials courtesy of Tarso Luís Ramos:

• Reading List for BUSSW
• Understanding American Domestic Terrorism Presentation

Event Description

The January 6^th insurrection was not the swan song of Trumpism. That rebellion against the prospect of transformational multiracial democracy continues in state houses across the country, where attacks on critical race theory, trans athletes, reproductive autonomy, and election integrity provide both the narrative foundation and legislative road map for authoritarianism, American-style. What are the drivers of this crisis and what are the opportunities for building a more just society in our time?

Featured Speaker

Tarso Luís Ramos, Executive Director of Political Research Associates (PRA), has been researching and challenging the U.S. Right Wing for more than 25 years. At PRA, Tarso has launched major initiatives on antisemitism, misogyny, authoritarianism, White nationalism, law enforcement, the Far Right, and other threats to democracy. Ramos is a sought-after public speaker and his work has been featured in The Guardian, The New York Times, and Time Magazine, among other outlets. Before joining PRA in 2006, Ramos served as founding director of Western States Center’s racial justice program, and exposed and challenged corporate anti-environmental campaigns as director of the Wise Use Public Exposure Project. Ramos recently served as an activist in residence at the Barnard Center for the Study of Women and a Rockwood Leadership Institute National Yearlong Fellow for 2017-2018.

Speaker: Lydia X. Z. Brown

Date: Thursday, April 15, 2021

ABOUT LYDIA X. Z. BROWN

Lydia X. Z. Brown (they/them) is an advocate, educator, and attorney addressing state and interpersonal violence targeting disabled people living at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, faith, language, and nation. Brown is policy counsel for privacy and data at the Center for Democracy & Technology, focused on algorithmic discrimination and disability, as well as director of policy, advocacy, and external affairs at the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. They are founding director of the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, & Empowerment. Brown is an adjunct lecturer/core faculty in Georgetown University’s Disability Studies Program and an adjunct professorial lecturer in American Studies at American University’s Department of Critical Race, Gender, & Culture Studies. They serve as a commissioner on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights, chairperson of the ABA Civil Rights & Social Justice Section’s Disability Rights Committee, board member of the Disability Rights Bar Association, and representative for the Disability Justice Committee to the National Lawyers Guild’s National Executive Committee.

Speaker: Autumn Asher BlackDeer

Date: Thursday, March 25, 2021

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EVENT DESCRIPTION

As social work moves toward reckoning with white supremacy, one vital piece of the discussion is often missing from the conversation: settler colonialism. Indigenous communities have contended with these disparities resulting from settler colonialism throughout time, often framing our interaction with the field of social work. This presentation will discuss previous harms against Native communities in both research and practice, highlight Indigenous contributions to social work, and ultimately address how settler colonialism relates to present day white supremacy. Centering Indigenous perspectives, this talk will conclude with self-determination as a way forward to decolonize social work.

ABOUT AUTUMN ASHER BLACKDEER

Autumn Asher BlackDeer is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma and is a doctoral candidate in social work at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research is focused on interpersonal violence and behavioral health among Indigenous communities. Autumn holds a bachelor’s in psychology from Arkansas Tech University and a Master of Social Work from the University of Oklahoma – Tulsa. Autumn is a strong proponent for American Indian higher education, an advocate for survivors of sexual violence, and is committed to achieving equity and highlighting resiliency throughout Indian Country.

Website: www.autumnasherblackdeer.com

Speaker: Justin S. Harty

Date: Thursday, February 25, 2021

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EVENT DESCRIPTION

Despite having a long and rich history of mutual aid towards families, communities, and neighbors, Black people have repeatedly been excluded from the histories of social welfare and social work. This talk will leverage historical texts, social work conference proceedings, and archival documents to highlight historical contributions to social work and social welfare made by Black individuals, leaders, communities, organizations, and movements that are often absent in the dominant literature of our social work profession. Topics of discussion will include historical Black efforts towards self-help, preservation, liberation, activism, and social justice and a social work profession failing to recognize these efforts as “social work” while struggling to confront anti-Black racism, train Black social workers, and meet the needs of the Black community.

ABOUT JUSTIN S. HARTY

Justin S. Harty is a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. He earned bachelor’s degrees in both sociology and philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011. He received his master’s of social work, with a concentration in children and families, from the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2013. After earning a master’s degree, he worked for three years as a foster care worker in Chicago, Illinois. He is a licensed clinical social worker serving child welfare involved fathers and provides father-focused trainings to child welfare, foster care, and family strengthening agencies around father involvement and engagement. He is currently an adjunct lecturer at University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, University of Illinois Chicago, and University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice teaching courses on human behavior in the social environment, critical social work, and introductory research methods.

Harty’s research interests include the outcomes and preparedness of young fathers aging out of the foster care system, father engagement in child welfare services, and father-related social services in the history of the social work profession. His current research examines ways to better serve fathers in home visiting, child welfare, and foster care settings. He is currently conducting his qualitative dissertation research on the experiences and needs of young Black fathers in foster care as they leave state care and transition to independent adulthood and early fatherhood. He also conducts historical research on Black contributions to mutual aid, social welfare, and social work history and is currently working with the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and several U.S. social work programs to better integrate the history of Black social workers into their curriculum.

Harty is the project coordinator and research assistant on the California Youth Transitions to Adulthood Study (CalYOUTH) leveraging longitudinal youth and worker surveys as well as child welfare and publicly available administrative data to examine the impact of extended foster care among transition-aged foster youth in California. He is also a research assistant on the Dads Matter-HV study using quantitative and qualitative data along with agency-level administrative data to test a father-focused intervention enhancement to home visiting services in Chicago, Illinois. He is the principal investigator of the Daddy Doula study preparing to pilot an intervention targeting low-income and vulnerable fathers through a father-focused enhancement to existing community-based doula services Chicago, Illinois.

Speaker: Josie Diebold

Date: January 21, 2021

ABOUT JOSIE DIEBOLD

Josie Diebold (she/her) is a PhD Candidate at the University at Buffalo School of Social Work in New York. She is a community organizer with the local chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a national organization that works to engage white people in sustained, active antiracism in accountability to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-led organizations. Her scholarship and organizing both center on white antiracist organizing and harnessing power to dismantle white supremacy as part of a multiracial movement for racial justice. Josie has been involved in local and national campaigns to defund the police and decarcerate jails and prisons, grounded in the long-term vision of prison abolition. She is an adjunct in the Master of Social Work program at the University at Buffalo and has lived in the Western New York area for the majority of her life.

Speaker: Masoud Kamali, PhD

Date: October 31, 2020 

ABOUT DR. KAMALI

Masoud Kamali, PhD is currently the scientific leader of the research and consulting organization ‘Incare Sweden AB’. Prior to 2019, he was a Professor of Social Work at Mid Sweden University and established the only global and educational program of social work with an anti-racism profile. This theoretical framework and practice have had a seminal influence in the education and training of social workers in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

Dr. Kamali was appointed by the Swedish government as the National Leader of the Governmental Inquiry into Power, Integration and Structural Discrimination between 2004 – 2006. The results and suggestions from the Inquiry have led to many anti-oppressive changes in Swedish social policy and the educational system. He has extensive research experience and has published work in the of social work and sociology fields with clear global perspectives on current social problems, such as neoliberalism, war, violence, forced migration, inequalities and discrimination. Dr. Kamali is the author of over sixty books, book chapters, peer-reviewed articles and research reports. His forth- coming book, Neoliberalism, securitisation and symbolic violence: silencing political academic and societal resistance, will be published this year.