我们采访了gsssr的校友 和平Lee-Akiyama, M.S.S./ MLSP ' 09年, who currently serves as the executive director for the Mayor's Office of Public Engagement for the City of Philadelphia. She was recently invited to serve as a member of the GSSWSR Board of Advisors.
你目前的工作是什么?你每天都做些什么?
I serve as the executive director for the Mayor’s Office of Public Engagement for the City of Philadelphia under the Kenney administration. 我是由詹姆斯。F. Kenney in November 2021, and we are now in the last year of the Kenny administration. I came into the office during the pandemic and the city had gone through so much. The mayor would often say “I don’t think there’s any administration that has endured what we’ve had to endure”.
我有一个大约30人的团队, and our office collectively houses the Mayor’s Offices of Black Male Engagement, 妇女参与, 青年订婚, 基于信仰和跨信仰事务, 公民参与和志愿服务. We like to say that we are the bridge between the Kenney administration and the community, particularly systemically excluded 社区 who have not always had a seat at the table. My team and I are looking at how systemically excluded 社区 are faring with the current situation in the city and identifying opportunities to increase access for 社区 to participate in policymaking, 同时为政府的不同成员提供建议.
我也做很多内部部门的咨询工作, 比如卫生部, our managing director’s office which houses our criminal justice work and recent opioid crisis response. 人 will ask for my guidance on how they should best reach our hard-to-reach populations. We are working with 社区 and trying to show them that there are authentic leaders in government who care about justice and are trying to make government better, 更加透明, 和包容的, 我们的反应和系统也不会那么压抑, 考虑到我们国家的历史，这是非常具有挑战性的.
gsssr是如何帮助你在目前的职业生涯中取得成功的?
I made a conscious effort to go into social work because social work focuses on people, 在这个世界上做任何事, 你必须了解人们. “金钱使世界转动”这句谚语是错误的, 相反，人际关系使世界运转. The building blocks and framework that social work has given me of understanding individuals, 家庭, 社区, 组织, 以及更大的体系，比如我们的法律体系, 非常重要.
在社会工作中采用创伤知情的方法有什么好处?
I think it is really wonderful that the field has caught on to the importance of understanding trauma. I remember first hearing about trauma as a lens to look at social challenges when I was working at United Way in 2012. 我的团队在工作中引入了创伤信息的视角, 它指导着我办公室的结构框架. It is actually one of the pillars that we’ve started over the past few years of understanding our collective grief and trauma, because I really do feel that that is what we are collectively experiencing right now.
你能强调一下gsssr帮助你发展的具体技能吗? Placement opportunities that were integral to your future career prospects?
对我来说，在gsssr期间，我真的开辟了自己的道路. I found my own placements because I was working for an organization which served the Chinatown community in Philadelphia, and I was very dedicated to working in that community and didn’t want to leave. I wanted to bring the skills I was gaining from the social work 程序 to the AAPI community in Philadelphia because that is what we need. There is this huge gap in bringing the framework of social work to the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community and there are so few of us in the profession, 因此，对我来说，继续与这个社区合作非常重要. The school really worked with me to remain in that community and gave me the support that I needed to be able to do that successfully.
I think it was the MLSP that 对我来说真的很不一样 and particularly the mentorship I received from Professor Raymond Albert who has since passed away. 他和凯文·罗宾逊都是我的导师, 以及我在布林茅尔时他们的指导和友谊, 对我来说真的很不一样. The lens on racial justice that those two professors had is so critically important. 这就是为什么代表性和多样化的教师是如此重要, 因为你无法教授真实的经历. 生活经历就是这样, 我认为他们带来了一个需要被倾听的镜头.
根据你自己的经验和你遇到的人, is there a particular kind of student that you think would do well in our M.S.S. 程序?
I’ll tell you why I picked the school because I think it relates to your question. I had gotten into two schools and took the opportunity to visit both of them, 当我参观布林茅尔时，我看到的都是非常敬业的, 严重的, committed students that really cared about the community issues that drove them to apply to the 程序. 他们有真正的奉献精神，不只是为了好玩, 当然，平衡生活很重要. 对工作和职业的真正承诺, and the level of professionalism that I found at the school among faculty and students, 非常鼓舞人心. If you are somebody who really wants to make a difference in your community and the world, and you’re a 严重的 student and want to be with other folks who will lift you up and help you fine tune your thought processes, 那么布林莫尔就是你要去的地方.
你对社会工作的看法有没有因为这个项目而改变?
我想是因为我已经在这个领域工作了, the coursework I took helped to formalize some of the practices that I learned by just being in the community, and it gave me a name and a title for theories that I could connect to the history of the profession.
你能告诉我们你目前与gsssr社区的关系吗?
最近, I was invited to come back to serve as a member of the board of advisors for the GSSWSR, which has been a great opportunity to give my perspective as an alumni and somebody who is working with marginalized 社区 on a daily basis and brings that particular lens of trauma. 我喜欢夏皮罗院长专门研究创伤, and I hope that in the future I get to do more intentional work around that. 我对探索创伤如何影响政府很感兴趣, 尤其是政府的一线工作人员, and how not being able to deal with trauma makes us less effective and more bureaucratic. 我对此有各种各样的理论, and again am grateful that Dean Shapiro is leading the school and has this deep expertise in trauma, 这是我未来想要合作的领域吗.