NYU Silver School of Social Work

After achieving success at one of the world’s leading advertising agencies, Stacey Klinger Schiff planned to pursue her lifelong goal of becoming a mental health provider. While volunteering under clinical supervision from an LMSW at an agency providing trauma-informed counseling to survivors of sexual abuse and intimate partner violence, Stacey realized that social work, with its commitment to cultural competence, social justice, and a strengths-based approach, was the right path for her. She has now earned her MSW and been named the New York State Society for Clinical Social Work, Rockland Chapter’s 2021 NYU Student of the Year.

As Director of Digital Media for Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Luisa Lopez helps keep 8.7 million borough residents informed about local developments and brings her social work perspective to rooms where policy is made. She is also President of the Latino Social Work Coalition and Scholarship Fund, among many other volunteer endeavors. She recently gave the keynote address at the annual Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy Student Advocacy Day ‒ which she first attended as an NYU Silver representative back in 2017 ‒ and inspired a new cohort of social work students to make systems-level change.

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.”

The communities that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 are the same ones disproportionately involved with the child welfare system. Associate Professor Darcey Merritt is studying the challenges and barriers the pandemic has posed for these vulnerable families as well the caseworkers who deliver services to them.

McSilver Associate Professor in Poverty Studies and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Robert L. Hawkins has considerable expertise in domestic and international poverty and welfare, social capital use and development, community participatory research, and race and social policy. He was selected to participate in a working group funded by the European Commission that is comprised of 30 senior American and European policymakers, academics, trade union representatives, and civil society leaders to exchange views and best practices on the future of work, with a focus on labor market change and social protection policies.