Alumni Spotlight

Flavio F. Marsiglia (GRS '91) recently appeared on an episode of the Mandel School's podcast, Change Leaders. A professor at the Arizona State University School of Social Work, Marsiglia is also director of the university’s Global Center for Applied Health Research (GCAHR), which exists to design,…

Margaret M. Kennedy, LISW-S, RSW (MSSA ’78), was the special guest on a recent episode of the Mandel School's podcast, Change Leaders. As a leader in social work, she lives by these words from Confucius: “To see what is right and not do it is want of courage, or of principle.” From the start,…

Since its establishment in the 1980s, Women’s History Month has taken place each March to encourage the study, observance and celebration of women’s vital impacts on American history. Such impacts are evident throughout Case Western Reserve’s past and present, from the university’s origins as…

Every year on the third Tuesday in March, the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) leads the celebration of World Social Work Day, when social workers worldwide stand together to advance a common message for social justice, human rights and social development globally, all through the…

The Mandel School is pleased to announce Hannah Griswold (MNO ‘93) as its 2024 diploma ceremony speaker. A strategic development consultant with over 20 years of experience in fundraising and brand creation, Griswold founded the New York Public Library’s Young Lions and made it her unlikely…

The 2023 NASW Ohio Chapter Annual Conference, held Nov. 16–17, brings together 300+ social workers and 50+ sponsoring organizations from around the state of Ohio for two days of learning, resource sharing and connection. Attendees are able to earn up to 30+ social work CEUs between in-person and…

Susan Sternad-Basel (MSSA '81) was the guest on Episode 2 of the Mandel School's podcast, Change Leaders. Sternad-Basel's career journey from social work to the armed forces is notable—she was the former deputy chief data officer of the United States Defense Intelligence Agency. She is currently…

Alumna Bethany Friel applies her social work experience to help manage affordable and mixed-income housing Bethany Friel (SAS ’11) still remembers the client who opened her eyes to the harsh realities of housing insecurity. As a social worker in her native Pittsburgh, Friel was working with a…

Alumna Darlene Grant became a Peace Corps volunteer at 49; 11 years later, she joined the agency’s top ranks. In seventh grade, with a bully on her heels, Darlene Grant slipped through a door at her Cleveland junior high school and found herself in the music room, staring at a line of…

There is no average day for a foster care worker. Just ask Marquetese Betts (SAS ’15), a Case Western Reserve University adjunct professor at the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, who has, for 24 years, been a part of the foster care system in Northeast Ohio. Betts…