NYU SSLD Fellow Mandy Lam, MSW ’22

Meet Mandy Lam, MSW ’22, a member of Silver’s Social Justice Praxis Committee, the Vice-President of External Affairs for Silver’s chapter of the Phi Alpha Honor Society, and an NYU Social Sector Leadership Development (SSLD) Fellow.

At the age of six, Mandy moved from Hong Kong to Vancouver, Canada. Later, she completed her bachelor's degree with a double major in psychology and music from McGill University in Montreal. During her undergraduate studies, Mandy volunteered with School of Music Montreal, where she provided adaptive piano lessons to children and adolescents with special needs.

Prior to attending Silver, Mandy earned her first master’s degree from NYU Steinhardt in Music Therapy. She is now a board-certified music therapist in the U.S. and Canada, and is trained in NICU-MT (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Music Therapy), First Sounds: Rhythm, Breath, Lullaby. As a music therapist, Mandy has worked with people across the lifespan at NYU Langone, Mount Sinai, as well as various schools and clinics in New York City. She is especially passionate about working with mothers and infants, families, and immigrants.

Within the MSW program, Mandy is doing her Field placement this year as an obstetrics social work intern at New York-Presbyterian Alexandra Cohen Hospital for Women and Newborns. There, she conducts biopsychosocial assessments, provides psychoeducation and community resources to patients and their families, and provides short-term grief counseling to patients and families that experience perinatal loss. She is also a graduate research assistant in Associate Professor Doris Chang’s Culture and Mental Health Research Lab, where she is currently working on a metasynthesis project looking at the racial and cultural experiences of therapists of Asian descent in clinical practice and training.

In her first-year MSW Field placement, Mandy was a counselor advocate intern at Restore NYC, where she worked closely with trafficking survivors in reclaiming their freedom and independence. She made such an impression that she was hired by the organization as a counselor advocate and part-time job placement specialist for the summer between her first and second year in the MSW program.

With regard to being part of the 2021-21 SSLD Fellowship cohort, Mandy said, “It has truly been one of my greatest blessings! Each and every single one of us come from such rich and nuanced backgrounds. Yet, our passion and drive to learn and hone in on our skills to become inclusive and empathic leaders in our respective fields, while continuing to open more doors of opportunities, not only for ourselves, but for those who come after us, are what brings us together. The sense of camaraderie within this cohort is unparalleled and I have never felt so close to a group of people in such a short period of time.”

The 18-month, cohort-based SSLD Fellowship offers BIPOC graduate students from across NYU a combination of retreats, monthly workshops, individualized coaching, social events, and annual leadership summits to build their skills, knowledge and networks to influence positive change in the social sector. Mandy singled out the monthly workshops as being “incredibly informative and helpful in not only developing leadership skills but also creating mindful spaces for us to reflect and understand how societal and cultural conditioning impact the ways in which we navigate the world.” 

The SSLD Fellowship program is accepting applications for the 2022-23 cohort through January 16, 2022. If you are an NYU graduate student graduating in or after May 2023, you may be eligible to apply. Learn more and apply at bit.ly/applyssld.