Byeongju Ryu (he/his) completed his undergraduate studies in health administration and social welfare in South Korea and received his MSW degree from the Brown School. After earning his MSW, Byeongju worked as a social worker specializing in community organizing at a social service organization in a public housing complex in South Korea. He also spent several years as a research project coordinator at the Brown School. With a strong interest in social and civic engagement in later life and environmental gerontology, he has chosen to pursue doctoral studies to empirically demonstrate the need to reframe aging and to examine how residential environments intersect with participation in social and civic activities in later life.

Grace is committed to finding avenues to restore a social safety net and improve working conditions for low-income populations. Following her Master’s in Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago, Grace worked as project manager on the Fulfillment Center Intervention Study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she analyzed how work conditions impact health and well-being, personal and family life, and decisions about whether to stay in the job or leave.

Lindsay Bendell is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with an MSW from Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her career started in a Public Defender’s office where she developed a deep commitment to advocating for individuals facing criminal charges. Lindsay has bridged clinical practice in both public and private sectors, identifying gaps in current research that she aims to address in her PhD studies. Notably, she has contributed to securing freedom for five individuals serving life sentences while significantly reducing sentences for others. 

Frederick earned his Bachelor of Arts in Social Work with Sociology from the University of Ghana, after which he completed an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree in Social Work with Families and Children (MFAMILY) from four universities/countries in 2021. His years of experience as a child protection officer and youth mentor empowering care leavers, street-connected and other vulnerable (including trafficked) children across residential and non-residential settings in Ghana and Sweden have defined his research interests. Frederick’s research goals include developing culturally-/context-relevant interventions that (1) promote better psychosocial outcomes for young care leavers as well as children with caregiving responsibilities, and (2) strengthen family capacity in under-resourced settings. He also seeks to gain the requisite knowledge and skills to develop and test community-based interventions for children and young adults with common mental health difficulties in sub-Saharan Africa, especially Ghana. 

Shauntal earned their MSW from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in social work within school settings. Recently relocating from Seattle, they have extensive experience in various school-based mental health roles supporting clinical research trials for adolescents with ADHD, implementing K-12 district mental health interventions, and creating learning opportunities to enhance the social emotional professional practices of adult educators. Shauntal is a Predoctoral Fellow in the NIMH Mental Health Services Research T32 Program at the Brown School, where they focus on implementation science and school-based mental health interventions for youth. Their research particularly addresses the needs of queer adolescents facing issues of belonging and suicidality. Shauntal is passionate about addressing mental health disparities among stigmatized youth through an educational lens rooted in social justice. Utilizing mixed methods and community-based participatory research, they aim to amplify youth voices and experiences to inform both micro and macro-level mental health service implementation strategies. 

Saria holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the Lebanese American University as well as a Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan. Her research interests center around the multidimensional well-being of conflict-affected communities, and they are informed by her prior work as a psychosocial support provider for refugee caregivers and children in Lebanon. Saria is interested in understanding how exposure to conflict and forced migration impacts well-being, exploring the interactions between various dimensions of well-being, examining how contextual factors influence individual- and community-level outcomes, and identifying and building on individual- and community-level protective factors. Her aim is to translate this knowledge into practice by using it to inform the design and evaluation of policies and culturally-responsive interventions.