University of Washington School of Social Work
Doctoral Students

Entering Class of 2006-07

 

Cecilia Ayón

graduated from California State University, Long Beach, with an MSW in 2004. Cecilia’s research interests include the experiences of Latino immigrant families in the U.S. with a focus on equity regarding access to services and outcomes, mental health well-being, power dynamics and advocacy, and the delivery of culturally congruent services, primarily within the context of the public child welfare system. Cecilia is completing a secondary data analysis of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being (NSCAW), a longitudinal study with a national probability sample of children who have come into contact with the public child welfare system, to examine Latino children’s mental health well-being. Her dissertation examines, from the perspective of the parent and caseworker, (a) the pathways to court mandated services for Mexican families, (b) the inclusion of the voice of Mexican parents in the case process, and (c) the cultural practices and expectations that are negotiated and/or integrated into the delivery of services. Cecilia is a CSWE fellow.
email: cayon@u.washington.edu  

Apurva Bahukhandi

obtained her MA in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai India, in 2000. Before coming to the USA for doctoral studies, Apurva worked with low-income women in urban as well as rural India. She also worked as a Research Associate at Tata Energy Research Institute, New-Delhi, on a United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and US Embassy-sponsored project and had a brief stint with the UNDP. Apurva is interested in studying the issues of socioeconomic empowerment and development of third world women. Her specific research focus is on how multilateral funding organizations, grass-roots local organizations, and women themselves conceptualize and operationalize gender empowerment and rural gender development.
email: apurva01@u.washington.edu

Karen Bancroft

obtained an MSW from Walla Walla College in 2003. Karen worked for the Walla Walla Veterans Administration as a case manager for homeless veterans with substance abuse and mental health issues. She is interested in the effects that neoliberalism has had in maintaining and increasing homelessness. Other interests include spatial inequality, both historically and at this moment in time.
email: bancrk@u.washington.edu

Lisa Bancroft

earned her MSW from the University of Washington, Tacoma, in 2006. For the last seven years Lisa has been employed by the UW Department of Medicine as a psychometrist in a memory and aging cohort study called ACT (Adult Changes in Thought). She gained additional research experience through the Northwest Institute for Children and Families, where she participated in an evaluation project for the Salishan low-income housing revitalization. She also worked for an HIV study with the Washington State Department of Health. Lisa’s practice experience includes her work as a psychometrist at Madigan Army Medical Hospital; as a counselor, case manager, and group facilitator at the PTSD clinic at American Lake VA Hospital; and as a family therapy aide with family preservations services. Lisa’s research focus is within the field of gerontology. Her interests include the effects of ageism and how it contributes to isolation and segregation of seniors, the need for appropriate senior housing for greater independence, and multiple issues related to dementia. During her doctoral studies, Lisa is working with the National CSWE Gero-Ed Center at the University of Washington.
email: lmills@u.washington.edu

Ramona Beltran

obtained her MSW from Portland State University in 2005. She has over ten years of experience working with diverse youth and families in clinical and programmatic capacities. The majority of her work has centered around services to Latino and Native American communities. Ramona emphasizes the use of creativity and art in programming including film and photography. She worked with a group of young Latinas to produce a short film that has been in national film festivals and is currently used in collegiate and community curricula in Oregon. Prior to beginning doctoral studies, she worked in the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Oregon Health & Sciences University as a senior research assistant and protocol co-coordinator for a Spanish-language clinical trial of Motivational Enhancement Therapy for treatment of drug and alcohol abuse through the National Institute on Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network (NIDA-CTN). As an NIMH Prevention Trainee, Ramona's focus in her doctoral studies is on how space and place become embodied physically and spiritually in indigenous communities.
email: ramonab2@u.washington.edu

Shauna Carlisle

graduated from the University of Washington MSW program in 2002 and has a practice background in the area of adolescent mental health and youth educational outreach. Shauna's research examines race and ethnicity, immigration, and health outcomes. She investigates the social contexts and linkages that explain how and why race, ethnicity, and nativity are associated with different health outcomes. Shauna's research interests include a social demographic analysis of health disparities among black Caribbean populations in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean Islands. Though her research extends to a wide range of health indicators, she is particularly interested in modeling potential years of life lost due to illness across racial/ethnic immigrant groups by length of residency in the United States. Shauna has been the recipient of a Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology Doctoral Fellowship.
email: ske9902@u.washington.edu

Elizabeth Circo

comes to the University of Washington from the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, where she was a program assistant. Before that, she was the Project Coordinator for the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect and a counselor for abused, abandoned and neglected children in
Washington, DC, where she earned a BA in philosophy and an MSW from Howard University. She also volunteered her time facilitating a young women's support group. Elizabeth's research interests center on the social development, adaptation and resilience of girls of color, especially as related to child sexual abuse, sexual orientation and other gender-related issues. She is also interested in studying children abusing other children and gender-based bullying.
email: ecirco@u.washington.edu

Marie-Celeste Condon

earned her MS in Early Childhood Special Education in 1980 from the University of Houston at Clear Lake. In June 2004, she graduated from UW’s Certificate Program in Infant Mental Health and Development in the School of Nursing. She currently works with families and providers of early intervention services to design, implement, and evaluate relationship-focused, community-based systems of professional training and service delivery for infants at risk for hearing loss and for language, social, and emotional problems. Marie received the 2004-05 School of Social Work Boeing Fellowship and is currently an NIMH Clinical Trainee.
Her research interests include risk and protective factors, effective models of preventive intervention, and implications for policy and systems changes.
email: mariec@u.washington.edu

Meg Cristofalo

earned an MSW from the University of Washington (1997) and a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Pennsylvania. She has practiced medical and psychiatric social work in inpatient and emergency room settings, and played an instrumental role in developing and implementing an emergency room social work program at a local medical center. Meg's research focus is utilizing critical qualitative methods to study the experiences and processes of patients and providers in community mental health care.
email: cristofa@u.washington.edu

Amelia Derr

holds a BFA in Theatre from Macalester College and an MSW from the University of Washington. Amelia's practice experience is in the areas of immigrant and civil rights, bias-based bullying/violence and discrimination, foster care and family preservation, teen pregnancy and parenting, social justice and the arts, international trafficking, and public education. Recently, she worked for five years as the Director of Education and Training for Hate Free Zone Washington, an immigrant rights organization founded in the aftermath of 9/11/01 to respond to the backlash against immigrant and religious minority communities in the US. Amelia taught as an auxiliary faculty/lecturer in the UW BASW, MSW, and Continuing Education programs for six years, concentrating on courses with social justice, case management, intergroup dialogue, and social work history/theory content. Amelia's research experience includes Participatory Action Research in India on trafficking of women and girls, and work as a Research Associate for the UW Intergroup Dialogue, Education and Action Institute. Her present research interests include the study of national, international, and interpersonal bias-based intergroup conflict, and the impact of bias-based violence on youth, families, and community.
email: seraphia@u.washington.edu

Aileen Duldulao

earned her MSW with a concentration in Administration from the University of Washington in 2006. A second-generation immigrant, Aileen has extensive experience working with low-income immigrant communities in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, with a focus on issues of domestic violence and sexual assault, mental health, welfare rights, and immigration law. Prior to coming to the UW, Aileen was Development Director for the Center for the Pacific Asian Family, a domestic violence and sexual assault agency in Los Angeles, and worked on immigrant rights issues at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. In the Bay Area, Aileen was also a research assistant for the Filipino American Community Epidemiological Study. During her MSW program, Aileen received a Pre-Masters Research Fellowship to work with the National Latino and Asian American Study.

Aileen’s research interests are focused on the epidemiology and etiology of mental illness among Asian Pacific Islander first and second generation immigrants and the impact of pre- and post-migration processes, human and social capital and US immigration policy on short and long-term mental health outcomes for this population. Most importantly, Aileen hopes to critically engage immigrants and refugees in developing community and culturally-based preventive interventions aimed at addressing mental illness, particularly depression and suicide. Aileen is an NIMH Prevention Research Trainee.
email: aileend@u.washington.edu

Karen Fieland

entered the University of Washington School of Social Work doctoral program in the fall of 2003. She has an MSW with an emphasis in Multi-Ethnic Practice (University of Washington, 2002) and an MS in Psychology (Indiana State University, 1989). She has over 20 years of experience in the prevention, intervention, and treatment fields providing substance abuse, mental health, and medical social work services. Karen completed the Multidisciplinary Graduate Certificate Program in HIV & STIs in June 2006. She has been an NIMH Prevention Research Trainee (9/2003-9/2005; 5 T32 MH020010), and currently is an NIMH NRSA Research Fellow (9/2005-9/2008; 1 F31 MH076663-01). Karen works with Dr. Karina Walters and colleagues at the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute on a national seven-site study: the Honor Project, A Health Survey of Two-Spirited Native Americans and its supplement, Trauma, Coping, and Health Outcomes Among HIV+ Native Americans (PI Karina Walters, 5 R01 MH 65871-02). Karen's dissertation study, Spirituality and Health among Native Americans living with HIV, is funded by an NIMH NRSA (F-31) grant. The purpose of this study is to: explore the barriers and facilitators to HIV service utilization, understand the role of spirituality in living with HIV, develop culturally-specific spirituality measures and examine the association of spirituality with depression and quality of life among HIV+ Native Americans.
email: kfieland@u.washington.edu

Xiang Gao

completed her Bachelor and Master degree from Department of Sociology at Peking University, Beijing, P.R. China. Prior to entering the doctoral program, Xiang worked for the Social Welfare Ministry of Civil Affairs (China) as an assistant director of the Urban China Anti-poverty Forum and as a data analyst for a project to evaluate the effects of Minimum Living Standard Scheme. In addition, Xiang worked for the Chinese Academy of Social Science, assisting in a study on community service for people living in poverty, sponsored by Department for International Development (United Kingdom). Xiang's current research interests are child poverty alleviation, intergenerational mobility, and policy variations (e.g., education and health) across states in the United States. One of her research topics pertains to how state level policies on after-school educational programs influence children’s out-of-school time activities as well as parents’ employment participation (especially for low-income families). Moreover, she is interested in the quantitative methodology. She has been using the data from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Xiang is also interested in bridging the communication between US social work with other counties. She co-authors with Dr. Susan Kemp in a book chapter introducing US social work development to Chinese audience.
email: gaoxiang@u.washington.edu

Antonio (Tony) Garcia

completed his MSW at the University of Washington in 2003. Between graduation and entering the PhD Program in 2006, he was employed with the Washington State DSHS, investigating allegations of child abuse and neglect. After starting out in the Office of African American Children's Services for approximately one year, Tony transferred to the Vancouver DSHS, where he acted as interim supervisor during his last few months of employment.
Tony's primary research interests focus on child welfare policy and reform, with a particular interest in examining factors that contribute to racial and ethnic disproportionality among children in out-of-home care. Along those lines, Tony is interested in developing culturally sensitive modalities and interventions that effectively address the needs of clients and communities of color. Tony received a Graduate Opportunity Program Research Assistantship for his first year in the program.
email: tonyga@u.washington.edu

Stella Gran O'Donnell

received her Masters of Social Work and Public Health (MSW/MPH) as part of the dual degree program from the University of Washington in 1996 and 1998, respectively. Prior to graduate school, she attained an undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Seattle University (SU) and worked over 10 years in the for-profit sector. While at SU, Stella also completed the coursework and internships for the Certificate in Addiction Studies program. Throughout her masters level studies, Stella served as a graduate research intern on several projects that addressed the prevention of health/mental health issues for racial and ethnic groups: the Minority Youth Health Project, Mutual Partnerships Coalition, and the CDC-funded Asian Pacific Islander (API) Teen Smoking Project. She has continued her involvement in research as a program planner, qualitative researcher, and evaluator on several projects that address the social, health/mental health, and human service needs of underserved populations. Most recently, Stella worked as researcher/evaluator in the Epidemiology, Planning, and Evaluation Unit of Public Health—Seattle & King County, where she served as lead qualitative evaluator for the Promoting Assets Across Cultures Project and project co-director for the Community Research Center. Both projects are sponsored by Seattle Partners for Healthy Communities; the local CDC-funded Urban Research Center. She is also lead evaluator in the replication of a parent-child asthma education intervention and the New School@Southshore pilot projects.
Stella’s research interests include exploring social determinants of health/mental health that influence the physical and emotional health and development of underserved populations, including refugee and immigrant children, adolescents, and their families. Through the use of community-based participatory research approaches, she retains a strong interest in the investigation of negative influences, such as racism and stress, and positive influences, e.g., social/emotional support and cultural factors, which affect well-being for these groups. Additionally, Stella is interested in community organizing; building technical capacity for community-based agencies in the areas of grant-writing, program development, and evaluation; and addressing cultural competency in social work practice.
email: sgran@u.washington.edu

Darrel Higa

obtained an MSW from the University of Hawai'i in 1988. He joined the program after 7 years of experience in a state STD/HIV clinic in which his primary responsibility was to provide counseling, support, and referrals to persons testing HIV positive and persons at high risk for HIV.
Darrel is particularly interested in investigating STD/HIV prevention within Asian and Pacific Islander Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered populations, and in examining the role of spirituality in social work practice. His research efforts have been supported in part by the NIMH-funded Predoctoral Prevention Research Training Program.
email: dhh1313@u.washington.edu

Seunghye Hong

received an MA in Social Work from Ewha Woman's University, Korea, in 1995. Before joining the doctoral program, she worked at the Samsung Welfare Foundation in the Social Welfare Program Division. Seunghye's duties at the foundation involved management and evaluation of programs in the areas of child and adolescent services, family services, and care for the aging, disabled, and homeless.
Seunghye's research interests are program evaluation and human service management, with a specific focus on family issues and child and adolescent services. She is also interested in assessing the effects of empowerment on social workers and volunteers.
email: shong@u.washington.edu

Linda Ishem

holds a Master of Management (MBA) from the Northwestern University, Kellogg Graduate School of Management (1987). Before joining the doctoral program, Linda served as the Director of the Pierce County, Washington, Department of Community Services. Her work history includes commercial banking; operating a public Community Action Agency; providing arts and cultural services; Housing Services; Community Development; and Economic Development programs. Linda's research focus is on examining the causes of urban neighborhood decline and the ineffectiveness of national and local revitalization policies and programs. She is exploring alternative revitalization approaches to transform urban neighborhoods into vibrant places to live, work, and raise a family, with a focus on investigating ways in which transforming the environment will contribute to improved well being and mental health outcomes.
email: lishem@u.washington.edu

Lovie Jackson

received her MSW at Portland State University in 2003 and bachelor's degree in communication from Washington State University in 1991. She has held multiple, diverse human service positions since moving from broadcast journalism into social services in 1997. Ms. Jackson’s social work experience includes play therapy, children’s mental health assessment, family support, support groups, and mental health consultation in Multnomah County, Oregon. Lovie received a University of Washington Presidential Fellowship, an NIMH Prevention Science Fellowship, and a Multidisciplinary Predoctoral Clinical Research fellowship funded by the National Institutes of Health. Lovie is currently analyzing data from the Casey National Foster Care Alumni study for her dissertation entitled: “Investigating Mental Health and Caregiving Disruption among Foster Care Alumni”—focused on mental health comorbidity and intergenerational family disruption. She is also conducting research on mental health, spirituality, and ethnic identity among youth in foster care, and evidence-based mental health interventions with youth and families in the child welfare system. Her mission is to advance treatment/intervention and prevention in child and adolescent mental health, abuse, and neglect among African Americans. She also plans to do community education focused on intergenerational adversity, family violence, and trauma.
email:  loviejj@u.washington.edu

Katie Johnston GoodStar

earned an MSW from the University of Washington in 2004 and a Graduate Certificate in International Development and Policy Management at the Evans School of Public Affairs. She currently works with the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute at the School of Social Work. In 2004-05, she became a fellow of the UW NSF-funded Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training, Multinational Collaborations on Challenges to the Environment program. In 2006 and 2007 she received a T32 NIH Roadmap traineeship for her research entitled ‘Picture This’: Native Youth Look at Their Environment, a Photovoice project using a critical pedagogy of place, youth photography and narrative to explore environmental issues of importance to Native teens in the Seattle area. Katie's academic interests focus on: (1) articulating an environmentally focused Social Work policy and practice, (2) establishing place-centered research and intervention paradigms for Indigenous community wellness and (3) maintaining the vitality of Indigenous sociopolitical movements through a variety of community based endeavors.
email:  cmjg@u.washington.edu

Richard Justin

is a graduate of the University of Washington MSW program (1996) and holds a PhD in music. During the past few years he has worked as a lead counselor with the HIV/AIDS Project Development and Evaluation Unit (HAPDEU) at the University of Washington.
In addition to his work on HIV/AIDS, Richard's research interests focus on clinical practice issues concerning mental health, especially in relation to problems for sexual minorities.
email: rjustin@u.washington.edu

Peris Kibera

obtained her MSW from Portland State University in 2004. Peris has practice experience in the areas of community development, program planning and development, program administration, parent education and sexuality and reproductive health counseling.
Peris’ research interests center around women’s reproductive health. Her dissertation research will utilize feminist and other critical social theory perspectives to examine systemic and process dynamics associated with loss to follow-up among patients enrolled in two Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT) programs in Kenya. Peris received the Boeing Fellowship during her first year in the doctoral program.
email: pkibera@u.washington.edu

Hyun-Jun Kim

graduated from Arizona State University in 2002. Before beginning his master's program in the USA, Hyun-Jun worked at the Korean National Council on Social Welfare.
His areas of research interest include social and political empowerment of Asian American populations (especially, the poor), cultural strengths for building community-based agencies and developing social action, and social and cultural adaptation issues in Asian American families.
email: hyunjkim@u.washington.edu

Min Jung Kim

obtained her MSW from Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea, in 1999. Her prior work experience was at the Family, Health & Welfare Research Department at the Korean Women’s Development Institute (KWDI) as a junior researcher. KWDI is a comprehensive research institute for improving women and family policies.
Min Jung's research interests are focused on juvenile justice and dysfunctional family issues. She is particularly interested in building an effective service delivery system for troubled youth and making a partnership with families. As part of her overall interest in juvenile justice and family policies and prevention services aimed at maltreated children from dysfunctional families, she is currently researching the interrelationship between early child maltreatment, running away from home, and later delinquency and victimization in adolescence.
email: minjk@u.washington.edu

David LaFazia

obtained his MSW from the University of Washington in 1995. His prior work experience was providing case management for older adults and their families in an assisted living residence. His research interests are in adult child-parent relationships in later life— especially the relationship between adult children who must care for parents who did not care for them. He is also interested in family involvement and resident outcomes in assisted living residences. David is currently working with the Northwest Research Group on Aging in the UW School of Nursing on studies to improve sleep and reduce behavioral problems for persons with dementia.
email: dlafazia@u.washington.edu

Jung-Eun Lee

completed her MSW at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 2003. She is interested in intergenerational processes of poverty, in particular discontinuity of poverty. In pursuing her research topic, she would like to develop a theoretical framework through which structure and agency issues can be addressed. She is also interested in quantitative methodology and statistics that are useful to investigate longitudinal data sets. Along this vein, she has accumulated her statistics experiences including HLM, SEM, Latent Transition Analysis, and Growth Mixture Modeling. Currently, she is working as a Research Assistant on the Young Women’s Health Study, Dr. Lewayne Gilchrist, PI.
email: jel5@u.washington.edu

Carl Maas

received his MSW and MPH at the University of South Carolina (2001).
Carl has worked in the United States and Latin America as a social worker. His work experience ranges from rural community development (Women in Development programs), child welfare (maltreatment prevention and family reunification), and counseling (intimate partner violence perpetrator group counselor and family/individual consultation) to mental health program planning, service implementation (language translation/ interpretation services for Spanish speaking consumers in South Carolina), and community activism (social/human rights and Green Party organizing). Currently Carl works as a research assistant at the Social Development Research Group and at the Friends and Family Lab. Carl's research interests are focused on child and parent emotion regulation and its influence on family violence perpetration and victimization (child maltreatment and intimate partner violence). Carl is an NIMH Prevention Research Trainee.
email: cdmaas@u.washington.edu

Gillian Marshall

received her MSW from the University of Washington School of Social Work in June 2002. Over the two years prior to entering the doctoral program, she was employed with the City of Seattle-Aging and Disability Services, the Odessa Brown Children's Clinic, and as a Research Assistant for Dr. Karen Lincoln at the University of Washington School of Social Work.
Gillian's research interests include African American older adults, health disparities, mental health, and social support networks. Gillian is co-author of the article "Health Screening and Health Promotion Program for the Elderly," which appears in the Journal of Disease Management and Health Outcomes, and sole-author of "The Golden Years: African American Women and Retirement," African American Research Perspectives, Winter 2005 (an occasional report published by the Program for Research on Black Americans at the University of Michigan).
email: geegee@u.washington.edu

N. Tatiana Masters

underwent her undergraduate education at St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM, and received her MSW from the University of Washington in 1999. Her work since then has focused on sexuality, including sex education and sexual assault, and particularly on the nexus of sex, gender, and power. Tatiana's overarching research interest is the influences of gender norms and gender inequality on women's sexual health, risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, and overall well-being. Her work seeks to understand, critique, and transform current cultural scripts for sex and relationships. Tatiana received the School of Social Work's Gottlieb Fellowship in 2004-05. Her ongoing doctoral studies are supported by an NRSA Fellowship from the NIMH, 2006-2009, entitled "Understanding and Empowering Women's Health Negotiations," which will culminate in a mixed-methods dissertation on women's sexual agency.
email: tmasters@u.washington.edu

Meghan McCarthy

received her MSW from the University of Michigan in 1999. She has worked in the field of early childhood development in several capacities including home-based clinician, teacher, mental health consultant, researcher, and policy consultant. She is committed to policies and practices that promote social and emotional well-being in children, families, and communities across the life span. Particular areas of research interest include mental health consultation in early childhood settings, quality care standards, attachment models, intergenerational transmission of trauma, and collaborative work to meet the mental health needs of children in the child welfare system.
email: mam703@u.washington.edu 

Morna E. McEachern

earned her MSW from the University of Washington in 2006. Her education background includes studying classics and Waldorf Teacher Training. Before matriculating at the University of Washington, she spent over 20 years as a teacher, counselor, and administrator in the Waldorf education movement. She is the founding faculty member of the Waldorf high school in Seattle. Her most recent work prior to entering the PhD program was in educational advocacy for adjudicated youth.
Morna is interested in the historical foundations of power dynamics as they apply to social welfare and the legal bases of educational policy for marginalized groups of students, particularly pregnant and parenting teenagers. Through researching the historical bases and the systems that administer education policy, she is searching for avenues for social and policy change in education that will support educational outcomes for pregnant and parenting teenagers.
email: mcmorna@u.washington.edu

Gita Mehrotra

obtained her MSW from the University of Minnesota in 2001 and her BA in Sociology and Psychology from Macalester College, St. Paul, MN. For the past 10 years she has been involved with anti-violence against women work in a variety of capacities including direct service, education and training, and program development and management with a focus on Asian immigrant and queer communities. Most recently she was the Community Projects Coordinator at Asian Women’s Shelter in San Francisco, CA.
Gita’s interests include violence against women in South Asian and queer women of color communities, understanding the roles of culture and cultural competency in social work settings, anti-oppression training/education, community-based research, and organizational development and capacity building with women’s and people of color social justice groups/organizations. Gita received a Graduate Opportunity Program Research Assistantship during her first year in the doctoral program.
email: gitarani@u.washington.edu

Dorothy (Jody) Miesel

received her MSW from Boston University in 2007 with a concentration in macro social work. She received her BA from St. Olaf College in 2001 with a major in sociology and concentrations in racial and multicultural studies. Jody’s professional work experience has primarily sought to address issues and concerns pertinent to older adults. This has included case management in the Massachusetts home care system, as well as evaluation and planning work at Generations Incorporated and the Institute for Geriatric Social Work at Boston University. While completing her doctoral studies, Jody is working at the National CSWE Gero-Ed Center at the University of Washington. Her academic interests include the feminization of poverty in old age, the promotion of education and training of geriatric social workers, and the social construction of aging.
email: djmiesel@u.washington.edu

Shawn L. Mincer

earned his MSW in 2003 at the University of Michigan, with a concentration in community organizing/community and social systems. For the two years prior to entering the PhD program he worked as a College Instructor, teaching sociology at Washtenaw Community College. At the same time, he held a position at the University of Michigan working in the Division of Student Affairs, University Unions Arts and Programs Department, helping to develop recreational and educational programs for students. Shawn also has worked on a grant development team with Professor Mieko Yoshihama at the University of Michigan. The team acquired funding through the CDC for a prevention program for domestic violence in the immigrant South Asian community in Southeast Michigan. While working on this project, he also worked as a Special Project Assistant for the Michigan Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. During his tenure, the coalition developed an Altria-funded project on domestic violence prevention in the Spanish speaking populations in the Greater Detroit area. This participant-driven project created and distributed Spanish and English language prevention messages through multiple media outlets. They also completed a national delphi survey on best methods in tertiary domestic violence prevention, which lead to a statewide conference and publication. In addition, Shawn worked on a team implementing a CDC-funded program to enhance local IPV prevention by enhancing and expanding Coordinated Community Response Programs in selected communities.
Shawn’s area of research is Intimate Partner Violence among the population of men who have sex with men. With the ultimate career goal of developing culturally competent prevention and intervention modalities, he focuses on the mixed-methods research approach to develop a deeper understanding of how this population develops meaning around this issue. He believes such research will contribute to a fuller understanding of partner violence in all populations and lead to more effective prevention and intervention strategies in heterosexual, bisexual, and queer relationships. He also seeks to do research on the current level of service provision in the existing domestic violence service provider system for men who identify as having sex with men. Where are we now, and where do we need to go to establish an effective service system for this population?
email: smincer@washington.edu

Sarah Mountz

received her MSW from Columbia University in 2003. She has been working in various areas of the child welfare system for the past six years, first in Portland, Oregon, and later in New York City, where she worked first with LGBTQ Adolescents residing in congregate foster care and later with birthparents in infant adoption. Her research interests include evaluating and strengthening services to LGBTQ youth in care through enhanced cross-systems collaboration and the development of additional permanency resources. She is particularly interested in the strengths and needs of youth of transgender experience within the foster care system.
email: smountz@u.washington.edu

Carrie Moylan

graduated with an MSW from the University of Michigan in 2001. Carrie previously worked as the Sexual Assault Services Coordinator at SafeHouse Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was responsible for designing, developing, and implementing a range of support and advocacy services for survivors of sexual assault. In addition, she conducted training, education, and outreach about sexual assault, which included developing a youth peer-education program.
Carrie is particularly interested in what seems a counter-intuitive dilemma—feminism has shed intense light on domestic and sexual violence; however, the prevalence of these forms of violence seems to remain unchanged. Has the feminist movement created authentic social change or merely coordinated a system to respond to survivors by giving them therapy and services designed to help them heal? Carrie is also interested in examining how programs have struggled with issues of race, class, sexual orientation, and other oppressions, including looking at the experiences of LGBT sexual assault survivors.
email: cmoylan@u.washington.edu

Quynh-Tram Huu Nguyen

graduated from the California State University, Long Beach, with an MSW in 1998. She then served as a child welfare social worker and licensed psychotherapist for six years. Most importantly, since 1994 Quynh-Tram has been a community activist within the Asian community in Southern California where she has followed her passion for empowering and advocating for women and children. She also served as the Co-Chair of a non-profit organization named Vietnamese American Human Services Association (VAHSA). Its mission is to empower the Vietnamese professionals in human services as well as to concentrate on the prevention of mental health problems and on community development for the Vietnamese community.
Quynh-Tram's research focus is on investigating spirituality and religiosity in relation to trans-cultural mental health research, policy, and practice. As a CSWE fellow, she is currently working with Dr. Sara Curran/UW School of International Studies and Public Affairs on a two-year study of the role of spiritual capital for influencing immigrant incorporation and successes in Olympia, Washington. Together with Harvard and Brandeis research teams, her project is part of three-city study. The study is expected to have important social science findings and contribute to public policy regarding how institutions best work with and are shaped by refugees and immigrants.
email: qthn@u.washington.edu

Roy L. Old Person, Jr.

earned his MSW from Columbia University in 1999. Most of his career prior to returning to school was spent in New York City as a medical social worker at New York Presbyterian Hospital's HIV/AIDS center providing case management and individual/group mental health services to adult men and women. He was also employed as a clinician in Santa Fe, NM, at Southwest C.A.R.E. Center providing case management and mental health services among HIV-positive clients.
Roy's research interests focus on the HIV/AIDS epidemic among Native American populations with a focus on Native American male sexuality and sexual behavior. Roy is a CSWE fellow.
email: royo@u.washington.edu 

Nancy Lynn Palmanteer-Holder

earned her MEd, from Washington State University in 1990. She has worked in education for 20+ years, an administrator for her tribe, a Team Leader for the Bureau of Census promoting partnerships with diverse communities. For several years she worked for UW Educational Partnerships & Learning Technologies as the Director for Tribal Community Partnerships. Lynn’s passion is to use research as a bridge for knowledge sharing between indigenous communities and research institutions. Her research interest has been to advance CBPR as a decolonizing tool in developing indigenous policies, processes and interventions that reduce “mental” health disparities and improve health outcomes of American Indian/Alaska Native communities. Most recently she has been working as a Research Associate for the Indigenous Health Research Center on a “National Community-Based Participatory Research: A Pilot Study of Process and Outcomes” with the Navajo Nation Health Research Review Board. Her concentration has been American Indian health policies and tribal research ethics as a mechanism to facilitate system changes toward culturally safe program development on and near Indian reservations.
Lynn is the recipient of a Bank of America Minority Fellowship and is an NIMH Prevention Research Trainee.

email: nh@u.washington.edu 

A. Tyler Perry

brings a background in languages and creative writing to his work in the social sciences and in social justice. In 2000, he completed training as a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs, San Francisco. And, in 2001, he graduated from the University of Washington with an MSW. Since, Tyler has centered his professional work in the field of HIV/AIDS, most recently as a licensed social worker at the Madison Clinic, Harborview Medical Center, providing intensive case management in English and Spanish for persons living with HIV, AIDS, mental illness, chemical addiction, and hepatitis. In the first three years of the doctoral program, he worked as an NIMH Prevention Research Trainee, participating on the HONOR Project, a study of Two-Spirit Native American/Alaska Native wellness [NIMH 1 RO1 MH65871-01, see www.iwri.org]. Currently, Tyler is an NIH Multidisciplinary Pre-Doctoral Clinical Research Trainee [T32 RR023256, see http://nihroadmap.nih.gov], mentored by Drs Karina Walters (Social Work) and Crispin Thurlow (Dept of Communication). Tyler’s primary areas of interest include queer studies, discourse/s, sexual health, and interpretive and emancipatory method/ologies. For dissertation work, Tyler will locate his efforts on the not oft-investigated functions of the mediatization of HIV/AIDS discourses in everyday life. This is to say, he is concerned with how what we ‘know’ to be ‘HIV’ and ‘AIDS’ are conceptualized, constructed, produced, and transmitted through mass mediated means and technologies, by professionals in the HIV/AIDS industry to targeted populations in strategized places and spaces of counter / public spheres. Consequently, he will conduct critical discourse and social semiotic analyses of textual and visual data that typify contemporary HIV prevention efforts, which at once mark as well as substantiate understandings of queer male population/s, HIV/AIDS, and a variety of their embodied forms. On one level, this work seeks to impact the stigmatized populations and places investigated; on another level, the real object of intervention is the everyday practices that constitute the professionalization of social / marketing efforts of prevention by the HIV/AIDS industry.
email: atperry@u.washington.edu 

Theresa Ronquillo

received her AM from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration in 1999. During her Master’s, she taught ESL and participated in community organizing activities with API immigrant and refugee communities in Chicago. Prior to returning to graduate school, she held positions in management, supervision, program development, and research in a variety of community-based settings in Chicago and Ann Arbor MI. Theresa is currently the Project Coordinator for the University of Washington Difficult Dialogues: Engaging Southeast Asian American Pluralism in Seattle project, a Ford Foundation-funded initiative focused on innovative pedagogy, dialogue, and community collaborations.
Theresa's research interests concentrate on how issues of representation and identity processes impact people’s views of themselves and their group, with a particular focus on the ways that U.S. Filipinos negotiate and make meanings from representations rooted in colonial ideologies. She is interested in using Photovoice, a particular blend of participatory photography, critical dialogue, and life narratives‹-to rearticulate subjectivities and as a tool for conscientization and social action.
email: tmr51@u.washington.edu

Patricia Logan Russell

joined the PhD Program after completing her MSW at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 2006. During an internship at the Rape and Sexual Abuse Center in Nashville she formed her passion for working with and understanding the needs of children, men, women, and groups recovering from sexual abuse or assault. She also worked on community awareness and education, including the Clothesline Project, which is an outreach program in local Knoxville schools.
Patricia’s research interests focus on the experience of violence, in particular sexual abuse and assault, and psychological functioning and recovery. She is working with Dr. Paula Nurius on a project that examines lifetime exposure to violence and developmental trajectories related to other resilience and risk factors. Patricia was the 2006 Gottlieb Fellow and is an NIMH trainee (2007-08).
email: plr2@u.washington.edu

Ebasa Sarka

earned his MSW, multiethnic practice concentration, from the University of Washington in 1996. Thereafter, he worked in the field of public child welfare in different capacities for six years. He served as a Practicum Instructor with the Child Welfare Training and Advancement Program, a collaborative project between the UW School of Social Work and the State of Washington's Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS). The program provides advanced practicum experience and training to graduate students preparing to work in the State's child welfare agency. Ebasa received a Presidential Minority Fellowship for 2004-05 and is currently a CSWE Fellow.
Ebasa's areas of research interests include multiethnic intervention models, and the analysis of racial, ethnic, and cultural factors in public child welfare policies and their implications in practice.
email: sarkae@u.washington.edu

Suzanne Savage

finished her MSW at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, Baltimore, in 1996. Her prior work experience included serving as a therapist/community liaison for Family Services Domestic Violence Treatment Program in Seattle.
Suzanne's research interests focus on similarities and differences between batterers across gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and race.
email: savage@u.washington.edu

Jennifer Self

earned her MSW from the University of Washington in 2005 and a masters in counseling from the University of Oregon in 1996. Here's the bottom line: Jennifer likes to think of herself as a renaissance woman, politically and personally committed to radical anti-oppression activism, education, scholarship, programming, and comedy. Jennifer's professional work, grounded in social justice, has included domestic violence advocacy/ training, group and individual counseling, professional and organizational training, teaching, and program development. She practiced under the supervision of an LCSW for seven years in order to shape her clinical skills in interpersonal process therapy. Jennifer is the Coordinator of the University of Washington Q Center, the UW's queer, gay, lesbian, bi, trans, two-spirit, questioning, same-gender-loving, intersex, and differently oriented resource center. Jennifer believes that social and economic justice is the core of Social Work as a profession and discipline. Jennifer is theoretically oriented to critical theories stemming from post-modernism and post-structuralism, and the praxis of social work—how social work (research, practice, and education) could better integrate liberatory schools of thought. She interested in historical and interpretive methodologies and questions related to political and social transformation. Her program of study focuses upon the inherent tensions associated with queer spaces and the juxtaposition of queer identity politics and a broader social justice ethos. Jennifer believes theory matters because it shapes how we think about and engage with social welfare questions in our work. In her life away from school, Jennifer is a partner to Meg, a mother to a member of the rebellion, daughter and sister, stand-up comic, cyclist, basketball player, Harry Potter freak, triathlete, and an anti-oppression/social justice nerd.
email: jms13@u.washington.edu

Valerie Shapiro

graduated with high honors in Psychology from Colgate University. Since that time, she has earned her masters degree in Social Service Management from the Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research and has held roles as a school social worker, outpatient therapist, and program consultant in support of children's behavioral health. Her most recent position at the Devereux Institute of Clinical Training and Research has allowed her to research and develop community prevention programs utilizing strength-based approaches to promote the healthy social-emotional development of children. Through this work, she has had the opportunity to serve on national committees to advocate for universal social-emotional learning practices, present at national conferences, and publish in scholarly journals. As the 2007 Gottlieb Fellow and Social Development Research Group (SDRG) trainee, she is currently using a prevention science framework to research risk and protection in child development, community-level interventions, and questions regarding the scalability and sustainability of tested-effective programs.
email: ShapiroV@u.washington.edu

Aster Solomon Tecle

obtained her Masters in Sustainable International Development (SID) from The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University (2002). Before that she worked with the Ministry of Education and the National Union of Eritrean Women (NUEW) in Eritrea at macro and micro levels for over ten years with a focus on ethnically diversified, community-based projects that address the social needs and demands of poor rural communities. Her research interest includes single mothers, the informal economy and poverty; land and livelihoods; international social work; and globalization and social welfare issues.
Her current professional work centers on power, mechanisms of institutional disciplining, how the exertion of power plays out in exploring, breaking, and (re)shaping individuals, and how individuals in turn reflect upon the power dynamics, through their bio-power, in any context.
email: astert@u.washington.edu

Quentin Smith

was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. His mother is full-blooded Sioux from Montana, and his father, deceased, was from the Umpqua tribe located near Grand Ronde Oregon. Quentin is the sixth of eight children. He lived and worked for Southern Cal. Edison in Los Angeles for four years until he got tired of the smog and over-population and moved back to Seattle. Then he worked as a bus driver for King County Metro for nearly ten years until returning to school.
Quentin earned Master’s degree in Vocational Rehabilitation from Western Washington University in Bellingham in 2004. Since then he has been a Voc/Rehab counselor in the Olympia area working mostly with the Native American populace. In his own words: “Throughout my lifetime I’ve felt that I’ve been a one-man crusader for Native American Rights, equality, and basic common respect, and now I find myself impatiently waiting for my studies to begin in the fall of 2007 so I can carry on with my crusade.”
Quentin’s focus will be working closely with the Native Wellness Center in all capacities to promote the health and welfare of indigenous populations.
email: quents@u.washington.edu

Alma M.O. Trinidad

brings an array of work in community organizing and research in mental health and education among diverse communities. She earned her MSW from the University of Michigan in 1999 with a concentration in community organization and social policy, and her BSW from the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, in 1998. Alma's research interests involve the examination of positionalities, mental health promotion, and community factors (e.g., collective efficacy, social cohesion, sense of community, place making) among Asian Pacific Islander (API) adolescents and emerging adults. More specifically, her dissertation hopes to examine how critical pedagogy serves as a venue for empowerment, collective consciousness, and community contribution as well as health and mental health promotion. Other research interests include community youth organizing and development that promote community assets, social justice, and enhance positive well-being for impoverished minority communities, and culturally responsible research and evaluation methods. Alma was a former CSWE Fellow and is currently an NIMH Prevention Research Trainee.
email: almat@u.washington.edu 

William Vesneski

As a doctoral student, William's primary focus is identifying and explaining state variation in the implementation of federal child welfare policy, particularly the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). Away from the program, he is the Evaluation and Research Director at the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation in Seattle. William earned his MSW in 1998 at the University of Washington and his JD in 1991 from Seattle University School of Law. For more than 10 years he has worked in a variety of program evaluation and applied research positions for organizations such as Zero to Three, the National Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Association, the Oregon Department of Human Services, the Sallie Mae Foundation, and PowerUp (a national digital divide initiative).
email: vesneski@u.washington.edu

Eric Waithaka

is a 2005 graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, earning a Masters in Social Work. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Community Development from Daystar University in Kenya. He has practice experiences in various capacities, as a credit officer for a micro-financing program for women groups, a program assistant for a girl-child education program and a rehabilitation program for commercial sex workers. He has also worked as a youth leader and as a community support worker for young individuals with mental retardation and developmental disabilities (MR/DD). He currently works as a Research Associate with the Institute of Applied Research in St. Louis, Missouri. He conducts evaluation research for social programs and services in the areas of child maltreatment, juvenile delinquency, substance abuse treatment and jail diversion initiatives.
Eric’s research interests are in the areas of youth, poverty, inequalities (asset and income), social institutions, and institutional change. He is also interested in asset-building policies, social welfare, and public policy and economic development in developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). His studies will focus on the functioning of societal institutions and processes within a country and how these influence the existence, extent, and de facto maintenance of poverty and inequalities affecting the youth.
email: waithaka@u.washington.edu

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