Katie VonDeLinde, MSW, LCSW (she/hers) is an energetic and passionate social worker whose 25-year career has focused on improving the lives of people impacted by intimate partner violence through direct practice, education, organizational leadership, and systems change efforts.
Katie began her career as the Assistant Director of a dual domestic violence/sexual assault program in Southeast Iowa. She received her MSW at the University of Iowa where she worked with the innovative program Building Comprehensive Solutions to Domestic Violence. Since moving to St. Louis in 2001, Katie has worked on groundbreaking initiatives, including the first comprehensive economic empowerment program for survivors of intimate partner violence in the US. As the founder of KMCV Consulting, LLC and an expert advisor to the Center for Survivor Agency and Justice, Katie trained thousands of helping professionals in economic justice and advocacy while advancing organizational and policy reforms. She also has provided counseling and advocacy at Barnes Jewish Hospital’s AWARE program. Katie is committed to empowering social workers to sustain their well-being so that they can continue the important work of caring for others.
Katie is thrilled to serve as the Director of the Office of Practicum Education where she aims to create meaningful, engaging, and educational relationships between Brown students and community partners.
Joe Jovanovich (he/him) earned his Master of Social Work degree from the Brown School in 2010, with a focus on community development and youth programming. He also previously served as an academic advisor and adjunct instructor at the Brown School, teaching Foundations of Social Work Practice in Organizations and Communities from 2013 – 2020. Joe has also served as a Field Instructor for numerous practicum students at both the Foundation and Concentration level.
Joe has two decades of diverse experience in the non-profit sector, having worked for national organizations like City Year and local agencies like Beyond Housing. Most recently, Joe was the Chief Operating Officer at Seed St. Louis, where he was able to work at the intersection of neighborhood engagement, food justice, and climate resilience. Joe also spent seven years as an independent consultant doing project management for numerous local agencies.
Joe currently sits on the board of directors of earthday365, which plans the annual Earthday festival in Forest Park. Joe is a proud alum of the AmeriCorps national service program, and has served as a mentor for many years through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri. He has also spent time in the private sector, having managed his family’s small business for nine years. Joe grew up in St. Louis, where he now lives with his family, and is an active parent in St. Louis Public Schools.
Joe is delighted to return to the Brown School as an Instructor and Field Faculty in the “mezzo/macro” domains, which allows the opportunity to weave together many of his experiences and passions to help drive progress in the social sector.
Cal J. Halvorsen is a gerontological social work scholar whose work is at the confluence of aging societies, paid and unpaid work, and social purpose. He has expertise on self-employment, job-training programs, volunteering in later life, and intergenerational initiatives, with his work cited in both academic and public spheres.
His scholarship has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals in gerontology, social work, and public health, and his op-eds have been published in The Conversation, Fast Company, Forbes, and Next Avenue. His insights on older workers have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, BBC, and more. Cal’s research has been supported by the U.S. Social Security Administration, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, National Institutes of Health, and AARP. In recognition of his contributions, he was named a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, the society’s highest category of membership.
Cal has ongoing collaborations with social purpose organizations to evaluate the impact of their work and build internal research and evaluation capacity. These include CoGenerate, which advances multigenerational solutions to social problems, and the Treehouse Foundation, which develops intergenerational communities that support children in the child welfare system. He has advised national research initiatives to benefit older worker and volunteer programs within the U.S. Department of Labor and AmeriCorps Seniors.
At WashU, Cal is an associate professor and assistant dean for faculty affairs at the Brown School, a secondary faculty member at the School of Public Health, and co-director of the Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging. He is also a project lead and investigator at the Center for Work, Health, and Well-being at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a faculty affiliate at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Cal was formerly an assistant professor at the Boston College School of Social Work.
Aytakin Huseynli’s research bridges political science and social policy, offering insights into family and child well-being outcomes. She examines how socio-political factors shape child and family well-being, with a particular focus on child wealth, health, education, and violence against children and family members. She also analyzes the effect of fossil fuel wealth on social development and how the resource curse impacts marginalized populations in fossil-extracting nations, where abundant wealth often hinders development. She proposes evidence-based solutions to improve child and family well-being, particularly feasible in contexts that lack the political will and accountability including countries that are rich in oil-gas-minerals. She collaborates with senior policymakers and global organizations to design and implement social policies.
Huseynli is a founder of the national association of social workers in Azerbaijan including social work profession and education. She was instrumental in social policies and services for disadvantaged children and families in Former Soviet Union nations.
She published in Child Abuse and Neglect, the British Journal of Social Work, Child Indicators Research, and Children and Youth Services Review. She serves on the Editorial Board of the journal International Social Work and International Journal of School Social Work. She is actively involved in global social development through UNICEF, the International Federation of Social Workers, the International Council on Social Welfare, the International Consortium on Social Development, and Social Services in the Context of Conflict Network.
Paz Galupo (they/them) is the Audre Lorde Distinguished Professor for Sexual Health & Education. Paz is the director of the Sexuality, Health, and Gender (SHAG) Center.
Paz’s research interests focus on the intersection of sexual orientation and gender identity, with a particular focus on understanding nonbinary expressions of bisexual and trans experience. Paz’s long-standing research program centers those most marginalized in the LGBTQ+ community (i.e., transgender, bisexual, and LGBTQ+ Black, Indigenous, and People of Color [BIPOC]). Prior to joining the Brown School, Paz served as Professor of Psychology at Towson University.
Paz is Editor-in-Chief for two academic journals: Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, the official journal for Division 44 of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Journal of Bisexuality. Paz currently serves as the co-chair for the APA Task Force developing Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Transgender and Gender Diverse Adults.
Theresa Anasti is an organizational scholar and social worker who focuses on understanding the role of nonprofit and community-based organizations in bettering the conditions for underrepresented populations. She is especially interested in the role of such organizations in working with and for “unpopular” and criminalized populations stigmatized by wider society, including sex workers, active drug users, and the unhoused.
Her qualitative work asks several questions important for the consideration of organizations that provide human services and advocate for underrepresented populations. First, how are people with lived experience included in the design and implementation of services that are meant to improve their lives? Second, how do leaders of mutual aid and grassroots organizations (particularly those made up of people with lived experience) contend with the tensions between their radical support work and the realities of nonprofit work? Third, how do frontline service providers, as street level bureaucrats, actually think about, and provide services to unpopular populations? At stake is a practical question for the field: how can we best provide anti-carceral, trauma-informed human services and resources to populations that are themselves marginalized within the field of social work?
Past work has included a large-scale qualitative project of relationships between mainstream human service nonprofits and a sex workers’ rights organization, highlighting the need for professionalization and the complexities of inter-organizational collaboration for organizations in policy fields that may be perceived as controversial. Emerging work includes a qualitative study of individuals working at syringe service programs (SSPs), and how they have adapted to changes in the field’s political and funding environments.
Prior to her role at the Brown School, Dr. Anasti was an Associate Professor of Social Work and BSW Program Director at Oakland University in Rochester, MI. She is an avid harm reductionist.