STEERING COMMITTEE

Blanca Alvarado, MSW, PhD, has been a professor of Sociology and Social Work at Austin Community College for the last 16 years. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD in Sociology and Social Work (Boston University), MSW degree from CSULB, and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. The majority of her social work experience comes from working in K-12 schools in California, as a School Social Worker; working as a Middle School Teacher in the Mission District in San Francisco and in East Los Angeles, CA; as a Community Worker for Children’s' Hospital in Los Angeles; working as an Advocate and Counselor in a domestic violence shelter with families and children in San Pedro, CA; as a Youth Worker in group-homes for youth (GLASS - Gay And Lesbian Adolescent Social Services and Hollygrove in Hollywood, CA); as an ESL Instructor and Community Builder for a non-profit community organization (Roca, Inc.) where she taught GED classes to gang members and ESL classes to recently arrived immigrants from Central America, in Chelsea, MA; as a Research Assistant working with the Wampanoag Tribe in Martha’s Vineyard; and as a Program Evaluator for The Higher Education Coordinating Board in TX. 

Robert M. Bennett, PhD, LISW is an assistant professor in the Indiana University School of Social Work at Indiana University South Bend.  He earned his Master of Social Work and PhD from The Ohio State University College of Social Work.  His master’s thesis, “The Poverty Attributions of Professional Social Workers,” was a study that led to development of the Poverty Attribution Survey (PAS), which is a measure of social workers’ explanations of poverty.  Rob was a post-doctoral fellow in mental health social work at OSU’s Counseling and Consultation Service where he provided services to persons, couples and families, and groups.  His dissertation, “Enhancing Our Understanding of Human Poverty: An Examination of the Relationship Between Poverty and Material Hardship,” was a novel approach to poverty measurement that connects income poverty and material deprivation through sensitivity and specificity statistics.  Rob’s teaching passion is culturally-responsive social work, community and social policy social work, ethics, and research and statistics.  His current scholarship grows out from his work on social workers’ poverty attributions and is an evaluation of outcomes from a poverty simulation, a high-impact practice, on social work students’ explanations for poverty.

Pilar O. Bonilla, MSW, earned her Master of Social Work degree from Hunter College Silberman School of Social Work. As a self-described social justice worker, Pilar is actively involved in the Payment for Placements (P4P) movement, the Social Worker Equity Campaign (SWEC), and the #StopASWB - advocating for racial, gender, and socioeconomic justice through collective action necessary for long-term systemic change.

Pilar is deeply committed to healthcare reform, recognizing the critical need to improve the system for both service users and providers. Her vision is to ensure healthcare accessibility for all, irrespective of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, migration status, ability, or socioeconomic background. Pilar intends to realize this vision through social advocacy, research, and practice.

In her leadership roles, Pilar serves as co-chair of P4P’s Advocacy Alliance, a movement that aligns with the broader struggle for dignity and better working conditions for all oppressed workers. She is also a member of the Social Worker Equity Campaign’s steering committee, which is grounded in the principles of equity, unity, and action.

Pilar’s contributions were highlighted in 2023 when she presented at the 27th Annual Conference of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), underscoring her ongoing commitment to advancing social justice and effecting positive change. In recognition of her dedication, Pilar received the Future of Social Work Leadership Award from the Latino Social Work Coalition and Scholarship Fund in 2022.

Steve Burghardt, MSW, PhD, is a professor of social work at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College-City University of New York.  A community organizer since the age of 17, he has been an anti-racist educator and activist throughout his career.  The author of ten books and many articles. His most recent books are The End of Social Work: A Defense of the Social Worker in Times of Transformation (Cognella, 2020) and (co-authored) A Guide for Sustaining Conversations on Racism, Identity and Our Mutual Humanity (Cognella, 2017).

Elliot Canant is an AA social work student. As a neurodiversity peer mentor and workplace peer counselor, Elliot supports and advocates for individuals with neurodiverse needs and workplace problems. Elliot volunteers with SWEC to help advocate for the disenfranchised, as well as to address the disparities currently facing social workers and social work students.  Elliot aims to create meaningful change in the social work field and beyond.

Sandy Lyons has been a social worker for more than 60 years (MSW 1959). During and following graduate study at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work, she practiced social group work with children and youth, first in the New York City area and then in Boston, MA until 1963. 

In 1963, she taught social group work in the U.K. at Barnett House (now Oxford University’s Department of Social Policy & Intervention). Beginning in 1964, she applied her group work skills to organizing and advocacy over a period of 30 years in Ithaca, NY, helping in the creation of the Tompkins Day Care & Child Development Council and then co-founding the Displaced Homemakers Center – a self-help, mutual aid community-based organization for mid-life and older women.  In 1994-95, she did outreach to women labor union members through the Ithaca Labor Council.  In 1997-98, in Melbourne, Australia, she helped with planning for health-based child and family support services at the Royal Women’s & Royal Children’s Hospitals and, at Melbourne University’s School of Social Work, she helped in a study of 300 Australian women’s services. 

Boston has been Sandy’s home since then, where she has been working in Early Intervention with families of diverse backgrounds, many of whom have recently moved to the U.S. from the Caribbean, South America, the Middle East or Africa.  Helping parents advocate for themselves and their young children in the face of cruel, bureaucratic hurdles to gaining basic public benefits, she collaborates with legal services and other advocacy groups.  Also in Boston, she was active with Survival News/Survivors, Inc., a welfare rights group and newspaper, and with NASW’s Social Workers for Peace & Justice Committee.  In recent years, she has been part of the Campaigns to Lift the Family Cap and to Lift Kids Out of Deep Poverty addressing MA welfare policy rules and very low grant levels that continue to oppress low-income families. In addition to the MA Chapter of NASW, she is a member of the International Association for Social Work with Groups (IASWG), and the Social Welfare Action Alliance (SWAA). 

Sandy wishes to pay tribute to the inspiration she gained from Betty Reid Mandell, (1924-2014), co-founder of Survivors/Survival News, Inc. and a social work pioneer.  Betty’s “vision of social work was true to that of our foremothers in the settlement movements, both Black and White, and to those who organized in the ‘30s and ‘60s for the rights of unemployed, low waged workers and the unpaid caregivers who deserve recognition and material support from the community.  Betty was an older woman who defied the stereotypes and continued to act despite the limitations inflicted by age” (from Sandy’s remarks at Betty’s memorial June, 2015).

Rosita is the Senior Vice President of Supported Housing at the Institute for Community Living (ICL). She oversees the nation's most extensive NY OMH housing portfolio for individuals with Serious Mental Illness and co-occurring disorders consisting of 1,676 supported apartment beds. Her focus areas of practice are mental health, substance use, HIV/AIDS, and housing.

Throughout her career, she has been part of different initiatives in housing, HIV/AIDS, and workforce development. This includes the New York State AIDS Institute: Positive Housing for ALL, Robin Hood: SEEDCO: Single Stop Initiative- Earn Benefits, and she opened the first housing resource center using a clubhouse model at Fountain House.

Rosita has received awards from the Latino Social Work Coalition Scholarship Funds, Marquis Who’s Who, and Manchester’s Who’s Who. She is a board member of Siembra Today and Housing Solutions of New York.

Rosita has also been involved as an executive mentor for the Supportive Housing Network -RELISH Program, which prepares Black Emerging Leaders in supportive housing to acquire leadership positions in this sector.

Rosita has a Master of Science in Non-profit Leadership from Fordham University and a Master of Social Work from The Silberman School of Social Work. She has a postgraduate degree in Advanced Clinical Social Work from Silberman and a Social Work Health Care certification from NYU Silver School of Social Work. Rosita is also a George and Belle Strell Executive Leadership fellow and a John Harford Scholar from The Silberman School of Social Work. 

Deborah Phillips is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.  Deborah teaches macro courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.  She is currently working on a book about the working poor in the U.S.  Her research interests focus on healthy early child and family development as it intersects with poverty. 

Deborah was instrumental in beginning an advocacy process in Georgia that resulted in the Care of a Grandchild Act being passed by the Georgia General Assembly. This law provides for streamlined power of attorney for grandparent caregivers; unfortunately, it does not include financial support for grandparents in Georgia whose grandchildren did not go through the foster care system, which was the initial aim of the advocacy effort.

Deborah is currently on the board of a national social work organization (ACOSA) and is also involved in several local agencies in Boone that seek social justice in areas of child and family development, affordable housing, restorative justice for teenagers, and supporting girls’ education in rural India.

Carla Silva is a PhD Candidate at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Carla aspires to conduct research on the intersection of food justice (food apartheid and food sovereignty) and identity, as it relates to mutual aid; its merger of direct practice and social action; racial/ethnic identity development and preservation; and the advancement of equitable social policy and reform.

Stephen Monroe Tomczak is Professor of Social Welfare Policy and Community Organization at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU), Department of Social Work.  Known to friends and colleagues as “Zak,” he has extensive experience with social justice movement activism going back to the 1980s and work for university disinvestment in the South African apartheid system, and his membership in Students for Peace while an undergraduate student at SCSU. This early student-based work provides a solid foundation for more recent efforts to undermine the systems of oppression that structure the U.S. political economy.

Over the last three decades, Tomczak has taught courses in social welfare policy and community organization at several universities, and since 2004 at SCSU. His academic research and writing focus on the history of social welfare and social work; poverty and programs to address this; social movements; and the history of community organization in social work.

As part of his current community organization practice, Tomczak is involved in a variety of efforts focusing on social and economic justice, including the National Jobs for All Network group working in Connecticut to advocate for state and federal job guarantee programs. Along with a group of colleagues concerned about the social work response to abuses by police, he helped form the state chapter of SWAA in 2020.  As an active member of the Connecticut State University chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Tomczak works to organize colleagues to combat the trend towards neoliberalism in higher education. 

All of these efforts, among others, provide valuable practice experience which are woven into the courses he teaches on social welfare policy and community organization at the bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels.