On April 3, 2019, four Brown School graduates were honored as Distinguished Alumni for their outstanding contributions to the fields of social work or public health. Through tireless commitment, innovation and strong leadership, these alumni have applied their Brown School education to improve society’s most urgent issues.

Distinguished Alumni 2019 include:

Michael Kaufman, MSW ’77, Managing Partner, KBT Partners

After receiving his MSW from the Brown School with an emphasis on Social Policy and Administration, Kaufman joined his father in launching SDK Healthcare Information Systems, which focused on providing computer-based information systems to hospitals.

He led SDK for 20 years, growing the company to a position of leadership in healthcare information systems. In 2005, he founded KBT Partners, a company with a successful record of mentoring CEOs and nurturing a multitude of early-stage companies.

Kaufman joined the Brown School National Council in 2005. In 2015, he established the Michael B. Kaufman Professor of Practice in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Brown School, which is held by Professor of Practice Heather Cameron. Through his commitment to social entrepreneurship, he has placed the Brown School at the forefront of innovation and transdisciplinary work.

“I mentor CEOs and I help them get to a place where they have effective organizations, and a lot of it comes down to the people,” he said. “The Brown School is really my primary focus of how people work together and how you can make people be more effective and be able to put their ideas into real action. There’s a big intersection between organizational behavior and what you learn at the Brown School.”

Bruce Sowatsky, MSW ’83, Executive Director, Community & Children’s Resource Board

For nearly 20 years, Bruce Sowatsky has served as the executive director of the Community & Children’s Resource Board of St. Charles County. He oversaw the first System of Care federal grant awarded in Missouri, a grant designed to keep at-risk youth from entering the juvenile justice system or long-term residential care by aligning providers, funding and services around the family. The success of this effort and the need to sustain the program led to the passage of a local tax to expand mental health services for youth.

Since 2004, Sowatsky has helped nine other counties pass similar measures, totaling over $93 million annually to support mental health services. St. Charles County has been ranked either first or second in child well-being by Missouri Kids Count for the past 14 years. This expansion of services has contributed to reductions in infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, juvenile law violations, runaways and the number of high school dropouts. In addition, Sowatsky initiated a county-wide baby supply drive, which has raised nearly $1 million in diaper and formula donations since 2007.

“I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished in St. Charles County, and we’re seeing it in the other communities as well. I think the model is working,” he said. “As a result of the things that we’ve helped pass there’s all sorts of opportunities for social workers,” he said. “And so that’s what I’m really passionate about: how do we recruit more young people into the field?”

Sarah Hunter, MSW ’08, Senior Program Manager, CSH—The Source for Housing Solutions

Hunter is a national expert working to end youth homelessness. Over the past two years, Hunter has traveled across the country to help city and state government officials, community organizers, homeless service providers, and young adults design robust plans and innovative programs to move youth and young adults from homelessness to independence and stability.

Prior to joining CSH, Hunter served in the Obama administration for seven years; first in the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and then in the Office of the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. She led the development of national policies to improve the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth in foster care and those experiencing homelessness.

Hunter came to the Brown School after interviewing homeless people on the streets of St. Louis while working for a Washington University professor. “That job totally changed my life,” she said. “My time at the Brown School led me to understand and empower young people and listen and learn and grow in ways I hadn’t really thought about before,” she said. “Most young people are incredibly resilient and when we put the right supports around them, they do amazing things.”

Sharon Johnson, MSW ’92, PhD ’99, MPE ’02, Dean and Professor, School of Social Work, University of Missouri-St. Louis

Johnson has demonstrated a near 20-year commitment to UMSL’S diverse student body, most of whom remain in the region after graduation and provide social services to the community. Before becoming dean, she was the director of the Bachelor of Social Work program and director of the school’s Center for Family Research and Policy. She maintains an active research agenda focused on violence, HIV-risk, trauma, post- traumatic stress disorder, and substance use among minorities, women, and youth. She was named UMSL’s senior investigator of the year in 2015.

Johnson said her experiences growing up in Arkansas inspired her to enter the field of social work. “Seeing the mistreatment of people who needed services sparked a passion in me,” she said. “What I really love about social work is how diverse it is in terms of what you can do and who you can impact.”

Her federally funded training grants prepare students for practice in integrated behavioral health settings and substance abuse screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment. She has conducted community needs assessments and social service program evaluations primarily aimed at strengthening agencies’ abilities to provide quality services to at-risk youth.

“I want to help other people give back and reach their full potential,” Johnson said.

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.”

The State of Missouri recently announced that it is amending its Medicaid Plan to allow for alternative therapies treatments for chronic pain, including services provided by acupuncturists, chiropractors, and physical therapists, effective April 1.

This important policy change is similar to a suite of policy recommendations considered in discussions held over the last year, in meetings sponsored by the Center for Health Economics & Policy (CHEP) at the Institute for Public Health and the Clark-Fox Policy Institute at the Brown School at Washington University.

“This change provides patients with tools other than narcotics to help alleviate their pain,” said Tim McBride, Bernard Becker Professor at Washington University and director of CHEP. “We heard in our discussions with key policymakers and providers that patients suffering with pain only had the alternative of using prescription medications, including opioids. The policy change thus could be an effective way that Missouri can limit dependence on narcotics and help combat the current opioid crisis.”

As the state of Missouri Medicaid leadership began discussing this policy change, discussions of this policy change in October 2017, when CHEP and the Clark-Fox Policy Institute hosted an event, Transforming Healthcare in Missouri: Ideas for Innovation and Investment to generate ideas for improving healthcare in Missouri.

One of the key recommendations offered to officials was to reinstitute coverage for therapy services for Medicaid beneficiaries to improve the health of Missourians.

In 2005, Missouri cut Medicaid expenditures, including access to physical and occupational therapy. Prior to the cuts, patients were routinely referred for physical or occupational therapy post-joint replacement surgery in order to keep the joint mobile. Without the availability of physical therapy, narcotics became the primary mechanism for treating chronic pain, which frequently led to narcotic dependence.

Gary Parker, director of the Clark-Fox Policy Institute, commended state leaders for helping advance better health outcomes for Missourians, particularly Dr. Randall Williams, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, who fully participated in the October convening.

“Every effort to reduce the opioid epidemic is critical and helps protect families from the terrible impacts of this crisis,” Parker said. “In addition, this change comes with a significant estimated cost-savings to Missouri of $10 million in the first year. This is both effective and practical policy. We are so pleased that our work and recommendations helped to implement this change.”

The Alternative Therapies for Chronic Pain State Plan Amendment will go into effect April 1, 2019.

For access to the full list of prioritized challenges and recommendations from the October 2017 Transforming Healthcare event, click here. For a full list of recommendations from the October 2018 Transforming Healthcare event, click here.

For more information about Missouri’s commitment to combating the opioid crisis, visit this site: https://opioids.mo.gov/.

More than 10,000 graduates of the Brown School have been making a positive impact throughout the United States and around the world. Below, we celebrate the accomplishments that have been shared with us!

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Jin-Hee Cho, MSW ‘99 has been appointed associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech.

Margaret M. Clancy, MSW ’97, policy director at the Center for Social Development at the Brown School, has been instrumental in guiding policy design in each of the six states that now have Child Development Account (CDA) programs. She is also directing the SEED Oklahoma for Kids experiment, a large-scale study on the impacts of CDAs in Oklahoma.

Elisabeth Coates, MSW ’18 is a staff assistant for the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations. She was named 2019 Outstanding Congressional Social Worker of the Year by the Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy.

Mackenzie Cook, MSW ‘16, received an Emerging Scholars in Family Planning grant to explore unintended teen pregnancy in rural Missouri. Cook is a doctoral student at the University of Missouri. 

Murli Desai, PhD ’83 received the Life Time Achievement Award from the National Association of Professional Social Workers in India (NAPSWI), in recognition of her accomplishments as a distinguished social work educator who has enriched the knowledge base of the profession.

Allison Dunnigan, PhD ’18, received the 2018 CSWE Child Welfare Track Dissertation Award from CSWE in November. She is now an assistant professor at the University of Georgia.

Kathy Ellis, MSW ’78, made a 2018 run for Congress in Missouri’s 8^th Congressional District. Outside of the political arena, she practices as a psychotherapist as well as a Certified Reciprocal Advanced Alcohol and Drug Counselor and a Certified Experiential Therapist III.

Matthew Frank, MSW/MPH ’16 is an assistant professor at the New Mexico State University School of Social Work. He was the recipient of a NIH pilot research grant, “Tribal Equine Assisted Psychotherapy: Building Youth Resiliency Through Horses.” He also co-wrote and is the lead evaluator for a $2.5 million, 5-year SAMHSA grant, “Prevention for Community Wellness: Positive Directions for Native Health.”

Remy Gordon, MSW ’17, has developed a free app, Seeking Shelter, which seeks to provide all individuals with information to receive appropriate and safe housing throughout the United States. Within the city directories, there is information for emergency shelters, family shelters, transitional living programs, free health clinics, domestic violence shelters, youth shelters, food pantries, and many more critical resources. 

Stephanie Gutierrez, MSW ’16 co-founded Hope Nation LLC. She explores how effective community wealth building in Native communities depends on an active process of cultural translation in a report published by the Democracy Collaborative.

Aytakin Huseynli, MSW ’04, and current graduate student at the Brown School, received an award from the Ministry of Women, Family and Children Affairs in Azerbaijan for her contributions to the development of the social work field in her native country. 

Charlene Laurence (Carbonatto), MSW ’87 is a senior lecturer at the Department of Social Work & Criminology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, where she is the program manager of the MSW (health care) program. Her areas of specialization include reproductive health, infertility, HIV and AIDS, mental health and indigenous health. Together with her team, she has been instrumental in registering social work in health care as a specialized field of practice with the South African Council for Social Service Professions.

Cashell Lewis, MSW ’18, is completing his first year as a doctoral student in social work at the University of Chicago.

Lisa Reyes Mason, MSW ’03 and PhD ’13, is assistant professor and PhD program director at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Mason also is faculty director of the Environment and Social Development initiative at the Brown School’s Center for Social Development (CSD), and she is a co-leader of the national Grand Challenges for Social Work initiative to “create responses to a changing environment.”

Maya A. McKenzie, MPH ’16 works at the Kitsap Public Health District and recently developed a health disparities report for the county. She recently earned her public health certification from National Board of Public Health Examiners.

Eulonda Nevels, MSW ’99 has been elected Board President of the Women’s Foundation of Greater St. Louis. She is chief administrative officer of YWCA Metro St. Louis.

Megan Porter, MSW ’16 has been with the Palliative Care Team at Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis since July 2017, providing support, resources and reassurance to patients and families dealing with life-limiting illnesses. She helps oversee the volunteer program No One Dies Alone, which provides volunteers who sit with patients that have no loved ones available during the dying process.

Kelsey Torgerson, MSW ’12 opened her private practice, Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, in March 2017, specializing in anxiety and anger management for kids, teens, and college students. In June 2018 she went to full time private practice, opening her new office in Clayton, Mo.

Sarah Ward (French), MSW ’93 published a young adult novel, “Aesop Lake,” with Green Writers Press in Brattleboro, Vermont (2018)

Virginia Whitekiller, MSW ’95 is currently serving as the Fulbright Canada Jarislowsky Foundation visiting research chair in Aboriginal studies at Vancouver Island University, British Columbia.

Lyndsey Wilbers, MPH ‘17, has been hired as a health policy associate at the Missouri Foundation for Health. 

Guangoin Zhang, MSW ’10 is a founding member of the China edition of Fast Company, a top technology magazine, and launched two major technology conferences in Beijing and Shenzhen, using media to bridge the information gap across social sectors. He currently divides his time between Los Angeles and Shenzhen and runs his own media production company.

Ross C. Brownson has been installed as the Steven H. and Susan U. Lipstein Distinguished Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. A ceremony was held March 26 in the Emerson Auditorium in Knight Hall.

Brownson is an international leader in public health and the prevention of chronic disease – a “leader among leaders,” said Washington University Chancellor Mark Wrighton at the ceremony. His research focuses on the translation of evidence to public health practice and policy, focusing on environmental and policy determinants of physical activity and obesity. As the director of the Prevention Research Center at the Brown School, Brownson is keenly interested in building the next generation of practitioners and researchers through evidence-informed mentoring.

“You’ve made a huge difference in the field,” said Mary M. McKay, Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of the Brown School, in introducing Brownson.

Brownson is the first to hold the new professorship, which is endowed by BJC HealthCare and named in honor of Steven Lipstein, the former President and Chief Executive Officer of BJC; and his wife, Susan Lipstein, a pediatric physician assistant and former parent educator with Parents as Teachers.

“A professor in public health is a high calling,” Steven Lipstein said in remarks at the ceremony.  He said the naming of Brownson to the professorship “warms our hearts and makes us smile.”

Brownson’s address, “Why is Public Health the One Good Infectious Disease?” outlined major advances in the field that are now the norm, like smoke-free workplaces, automobile safety features and clean water. 

“When public health is at its best, it is invisible and so too often taken for granted,” he said. He said health disparities must be addressed by focusing on the social determinants of health, such as food insecurity and gun violence. He called the 17-year gap between research findings and putting them into practice “a long, leaky pipeline” and suggested that using a model based on the same factors that spread disease might be used to speed the dissemination of successful public-health strategies.

“Public health gets in your blood and you don’t want to be cured,” he concluded.

Brownson joined Washington University in 2008 and now serves on the faculty at the Brown School and at the Department of Surgery (Division of Public Health Sciences) within the School of Medicine. He directs the Prevention Research Center, which focuses on translational research aimed at reducing chronic disease risk and increasing health equity in a range of public health, community, and policy settings. 

He is the author of 9 books and over 500 peer-reviewed articles. His books include Chronic Disease Epidemiology and Control, Applied Epidemiology, Evidence-Based Public Health, and Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health: Translating Science to Practice. He is an associate editor of the Annual Review of Public Health, and on the editorial board of six other journals. 

Brownson’s many awards include the Abraham Lilienfeld Award for outstanding contributions in teaching and mentoring and the Award for Excellence (both from the American Public Health Association) and the Charles C. Shepard Science Award (the highest award for science, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Dr. Brownson has been repeatedly named by Thompson Reuters as one of the world’s most influential scientific minds. 

Steven and Susan Lipstein

Steven and Susan Lipstein moved to St. Louis in 2000, when Steve became president and CEO of BJC HealthCare.

Steve began his career at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and over the ensuing years, he assumed positions of increasing responsibility at Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago Hospitals before coming to BJC.  Susan was certified as a Child Health Associate, and licensed as a pediatric physician assistant. Her career began at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she and Steve met. She entered private practice in general pediatrics in Chicago and became a parent educator with Parents as Teachers in the Clayton School District.

For almost four decades, Steve and Susan have committed both their professional careers and their community service activities to health care, public education, and early childhood development to improve access and opportunity, especially for those living with the disadvantages of poverty.

They now reside primarily in Colorado, near their children.

BJC HealthCare

One of the largest nonprofit health care organizations in the United States, BJC HealthCare is focused on delivering health care services to residents primarily in the greater St. Louis, southern Illinois and mid-Missouri regions. BJC serves the health care needs of urban, suburban and rural communities and includes 15 hospitals and multiple community health locations. Its services include inpatient and outpatient care, primary care, community health and wellness, workplace health, home health, community mental health, rehabilitation, long term care and  hospice.

As a nonprofit health care organization, BJC is the largest provider of charity care, unreimbursed care and community benefit in Missouri, providing more than $900 million in free or reduced medical care, education of health professionals, medical research funding and community outreach programs.

BJC was created in June 1993 with the merger of Barnes-Jewish Inc. an affiliation between Barnes Hospital and The Jewish Hospital of St. Louis, and Christian Health Services. 

​The Trump administration said this week that the whole Affordable Care Act (ACA) should be struck down in the courts. Doing so would have profound implications on health care and the economy, said an expert on health economics at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Not only would it repeal the marketplace plans coverage, which get most of the attention but yet cover only about 11.4 million people, but it would repeal a whole host of insurance reforms that affect many more millions of people, including protections against pre-existing condition exclusions,” said Timothy McBride, the Bernard Becker Professor at the Brown School and co-director of the Center for Health Economics and Policy.

“It would also repeal expansions for dependents up to age 26, and coverage expansion for the aged, including expanding their Part D prescription drug coverage,” McBride said. “The list of enhancements and improvements (that the ACA brings) to people’s health-care coverage is extensive.”

McBride said some 17 million Americans would lose health coverage overnight if the ACA, often called “Obamacare,” is struck down.

Repeal would have a huge impact on the health-care industry itself, which has been moving since 2010 to adapt to the ACA.

“The changes in Obamacare include many that are not widely known to the public, and include changes in the way health care is paid for and delivered and how we increase our workforce for health care,” McBride said. “It has profoundly changed the health insurance industry.”

The direct impact of repeal on the economy is hard to measure, he said, but on balance the changes are thought to bring about a negative impact on the health sector and dollars would move out of it and into other areas.

“The Congressional Budget Office projected that the ACA would reduce the deficit over time, so repealing it outright or having it declared unconstitutional would mean that the federal deficit would increase by a relatively small amount, which would have a small impact on the economy overall,” McBride said. “But underneath that, the changes would be large, from sector to sector.  Most of the employment growth lately has been in health care.”

Republicans have not put forth a replacement plan. Efforts to “repeal and replace” it have failed since President Donald Trump took office and made it a target.

“Even in the debates in 2017, the proposals were to partially replace Obamacare, leaving much of it in place outside of the individual mandate, and that was because it was assumed that the entire law would never be repealed legislatively,” McBride said.

“That is much less likely to happen now, and a replacement bill is much less likely to pass because we have a partisan Congress, with the House controlled by the Democrats and the Senate controlled by the Republicans.”