NYU Silver School of Social Work

Diane Valle, MSW ’23, is a Mexican-American, first generation college graduate and graduate student who is a passionate advocate for other Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)  first generation students. With support from Silver’s Office of Inclusive Engagement and Student Life, she founded First Gen Students of Color, NYU Silver’s newest student organization, which connects BIPOC first generation students to one another as well as to resources at the school and the wider university.

At NYU Silver’s Class of 2022 convocation ceremony, Nadine Raia led the academic procession, carrying the school banner into the historic United Palace theater. One month later, she was already fulfilling her dream as a therapist at New York Center for Living, working with adolescents and young adults with substance use and co-occurring mental health issues. She has come a long way since she entered Silver’s 16-month MSW degree pathway in January 2021, three decades after she earned her undergraduate degree in journalism.

While earning his degree at Silver, Michael Sanders (front row center), MSW ’19—father, army veteran, and entrepreneur—was the vice president of the NYU Military Alliance, an NYU Social Sector Leadership Diversity Fellow, a Silver Student Leadership Council Fellow, a member of the Students of Color Collective, and one of two students on the School’s Social Justice Praxis Committee. Michael, who is now a Social Service Advocate at the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Boston, observed, “Being a social worker means fighting for social justice and never forgetting our responsibility to our clients, to ourselves, and to society as a whole.”

As chair of the working group of experts supporting the Congressional Black Caucus Emergency Taskforce on Black Youth Suicide and Mental Health, Dean Michael A. Lindsey led the production of a report titled Ring the Alarm: The Crisis of Black Youth Suicide, which informed the bipartisan Pursuing Equity in Mental Health Act. Now he’s leading an National Institutes of Health-funded  study testing a system of care for Black youth presenting at NYC hospital emergency departments that combines suicide risk screening with an intervention to help connect at-risk youth to quality mental health services.

Professor Michelle R. Munson has made it her mission to help the mental health system better respond to marginalized young adults whose mental health challenges, if left untreated, impede their ability to form relationships, hold jobs, live independently, and function well in society.