Brown School Recognizes 2019 Emerging Alumni Leaders 4/8/2019 Alumni Share this Story: Hear our 2019 Emerging Leaders share their career paths and highlights of the Brown School. On April 3, 2019, the Brown School recognized four alumni with Emerging Leader Awards at the Awards of Distinction ceremony. The Emerging Leader Award is bestowed each year to alumni who earned their in the past 10 years and have shown remarkable early career achievement, innovation and public service. 2019 Emerging Leaders included: Lindsey Wise, MSW/MPH ’10, Nutrition and HIV advisor, United Nations World Food Programme in Mozambique Lindsey Wise supports collaboration across United Nations agencies to harmonize and coordinate UN nutrition efforts to increase effectiveness and better align UN action with national priorities and plans. Before her current job, Wise worked with United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme on the design, implementation and monitoring of nutrition policy and programs at country and regional levels in Asia and West Africa. “I feel that my career really started at the Brown School,” she said. “Being able to attend the Brown School when the public health program was just starting was transformational for my career path and learning. I started focusing on public nutrition near the end of my time there. I received a McKinley Hunger Fellowship in Cambodia working with the World Food Programme and then from there everything just came together. Being able to go somewhere, particularly after a natural disaster, and see things getting better day by day is something very satisfying to see.” Aaron Beswick, MSW/MPH ’15, Public Health Analyst, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services A public health analyst in Chicago, Beswick plays a role in the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy administering grant funding to support treatment for and prevention of opioid misuse in high-risk rural communities. He also assesses the effects federal health care policies and regulations may have on rural communities. The rural policy issues currently assigned to him include Medicare hospital outpatient services, state Medicaid waivers, and health- related human services. Prior to earning his degrees from the Brown School, he worked as a case manager serving families living in mixed-income housing in Chicago. “The skills I honed at the Brown School are ones I use every day in my job,” he said, citing in particular his practicum as a state legislative intern. “The process of learning how state policy is made was an opportunity that was important for me going forward.” “We come from a tradition in social work of big, bold policy ideas and I think they don’t get spoken of enough,” he said, citing Social Security as an example. “Millions of seniors are lifted out of poverty every year thanks to that program. And there’s a social worker behind it. I think the problems that we’re facing right now as a country need big, bold ideas. And we need social workers to be behind us.” Daniel Sherling, MSW ’12, Senior Global Manager of Corporate Responsibility, MilliporeSigma Sherling is responsible for the MilliporeSigma’s worldwide community outreach and philanthropy programs. Under his guidance, the company launched its signature science education outreach programs—Curiosity CubeTM and Curiosity LabsTM—which have reached more than 100,000 students in 19 countries with hands-on, data-driven science experiments to spark curiosity and inspire future generations of scientists. Sherling also oversaw the implementation of the company’s largest corporate responsibility initiative, SPARK, which engages employees across 36 countries and empowers them to participate in charitable activities designed to benefit their local communities. Before joining MilliporeSigma, Sherling spent time working in education advocacy, the City of St. Louis’ Mayor’s Office and youth outreach. “From day one at the Brown School they drilled into us the importance of evidence-based research,” said Shrerling, who concentrated in Domestic Social and Economic Development. “All of the programs that we have at Millipore Sigma are driven by a data-first mentality, ensuring that everything we do has impact.” Sherling believes that corporate responsibility is one of the “coolest” career paths that you can take with a degree in social work: “You’re able to really meld a lot of the things that you learn with a passion for social equality or education or policy. There’s the budget of a large corporation and the willingness to push down some of the barriers that you may not able to push down in other positions.” Samantha Stangl, MSW ’13, Programs Manager, Clark-Fox Family Foundation Stangl is responsible for the oversight and implementation of the Foundation’s Mass Incarceration Community Education Initiative. The project seeks to inform the community and key leaders about the devastating consequences incarceration has on children, communities and families—and galvanize stakeholders to reform. Prior to her work at the Foundation, Stangl spent nearly 10 years providing direct services to families. This included working with immigrant survivors of intimate partner violence, mentoring low-income youth seeking college education, and providing case management and in-home support services to vulnerable children and families. She also worked at the St. Louis County Children’s Service Fund where she helped allocate more than $100 million. “One of the reasons that I chose social work is I benefited tremendously from social work services as a child,” said Stangl, whose concentration at the Brown School was Children, Youth & Families. “Head Start, food stamps, subsidized housing, and I was in a college access program for low-income youth. And I think I came to social work to help others in the way that I had been helped.” “I’m really passionate about helping people unlock the best version of themselves,” she explained. “People have so much inherent worth; if they have the supports and they have the resources there’s so much potential there.”