Our Adaptive Leadership in Human Services Institute recently hosted its annual Adaptive Leadership Fellowship Colloquium featuring reflections from the 15 MSW students from NYU Silver and one from CUNY’s College of Staten Island (CSI) who are in our seventh cohort of MSW Adaptive Leadership Fellows.
The fellowship program features four half-day weekend seminars on adaptive leadership, a framework that provides strategies and tools to help practitioners bring about necessary change within organizations and communities, as well as coaching and guidance to help fellows directly apply what they have learned through interventions in their Field placement agencies, schools, or other organizations with which they are involved.
Unlike previous years, when Fellows undertook individual adaptive challenges and the colloquium marked the culmination of their fellowship experience, this year’s fellows were organized into smaller groups to collaboratively address a social justice challenge that is aligned with their purpose and the colloquium marked the midpoint of their fellowship experience. The Fellows will reconvene at four two-hour monthly meetings in Fall 2022 to continue working within their established groups in the spirit of making continued collective progress on the adaptive challenges they identified. During Spring 2023, Fellows will join together with members of the incoming 2023 fellowship cohort for Spring seminars to share their progress and to invite the new fellows into the collective change-making process they have been pursuing. They will also provide mentorship, support, and if desired, career-related connections to the incoming cohort.
According to Adaptive Leadership Project Coordinator Mary Burns, MSW ’19, who was a member of the fellowship’s fourth cohort, the fellowship program was extended “to help fellows carry forth the leadership practices they have learned and to build a lasting supportive community where they can sustain their change-making work.”
2022-23 MSW Adaptive Leadership in Human Services Fellows:
Karl Alexandre, CSI MSW ’22
Jennifer Bryant, MSW ’22
Kelsey Cina, MSW ’22
Jennifer Dardon, MSW ’22
Alexandra (Ali) Everett, MSW ’22
Trisha Regine Fuerte, MSW ’23,
Natalie Gutierrez, MSW ’22
Jennifer Libert, MSW ’22
Samantha (Sam) Marin, MSW ’22
Sejal Mehta, MSW ’22
Mary Pichardo, MSW ’22
Christina Pugliese, MSW ’22
Angelica Rivera, MSW ’23
Chloe Rothbloom, MSW ’22
Rossibel Taveras, MSW ’22
Jayson Vivas, MSW ’22
During the recent virtual colloquium, five teams of Fellows reported on their collective challenges and the interventions they have begun to undertake, including successes, lessons learned, and implications for next steps. The challenge Jennifer Dardon, Sejal Mehta, and Rossibel Taveras presented on was Mental Health Within NYC DOE Schools; Jennifer Bryant, Jennifer Libert, Jayson Vivas, and Chloe Rothbloom presented on Increase Abolition in Institutions of Social Work Education; Natalie Gutierrez, Karl Alexandre, and Kelsey Cina presented on Post-Secondary Access for All; Ali Everett, Christina Pugliese, and Mary Pichardo presented on Youth Development Within Community-based Clinical Practice; and Angelica Rivera, Sam Marin, and Trisha Fuerte presented on Enhancing Psychosexual Education.
We are proud of the achievements and hard work put forth by this cohort of new learners. We look forward to supporting their further development and celebrating the ways they use the framework and exercise leadership in their social work careers.
NYU Silver MSW students who wish to apply for the next cohort of Adaptive Leadership in Human Services Fellows must either complete the Fall course “Exercising Leadership in the Nonprofit and Public Sectors” or complete a two-week January Winter Workshop that will focus on the conceptual underpinnings and practices of the adaptive leadership framework. More information about applying for the fellowship will be sent to MSW students in Fall 2022.