M.S.W. Field Advisers

Field advisers work with students from September to April, while they are completing field internships. Advisers guide students through assignments such as monthly narrative and statistical reports, developing a learning plane, an issue-oriented report, and a major case study.

Meet our Faculty Field Advisers

Meet our Seminar Instructors

Elizabeth Anable
Faculty Field Adviser
No bio information available.

Stephen Bradley
Faculty Field Adviser | Seminar Instructor
Stephen (he/him) received his M.Ed. in Counseling from Umass Amherst in 1992 and his M.S.W. from Smith College SSW in 2002. He worked in non-profit agencies providing community based / home based services and residential treatment as a therapist, supervisor and program director for over 20 years before transitioning to full time private practice. He primarily served BIPOC and underprivileged youth and families during much of this time. He is an adjunct professor at Smith College School for Social Work where he’s taught and field advised students since 2010.

He’s taught first year practice, field seminar, family theory, community practice with youth and families and presently teaches an introduction to NMTTM course and field seminar. In his private practice he specializes in work with youth, families and adults with histories of developmental, complex and oppression based trauma. He’s been a Fellow of the Child Trauma Academy, is presently certified in Phases I and II and working on his Phase III / Mentor Certification in NMTTM. Bradley has a lifelong commitment to weaving social justice and anti-oppression frameworks in both teaching and treatment settings. He and his partner live with their blended family in Western MA.

Rebecca Castro
Faculty Field Adviser | Seminar Instructor
No bio information available.

Katya Cerar
Faculty Field Adviser
Katya Cerar, Ph.D., LICSW, (she/her) identifies as a bicultural Puerto Rican cisgender heterosexual woman. She is an associate director of field education at Smith College and has taught, supervised and advised students from various New England schools of Social Work. Cerar has supervised teams of staff in day treatment, outreach and residential services, and has practiced in residential, forensic and outpatient settings, and in private practice. She has provided consultation to agencies in a number of areas. Cerar is a BTTG certified DBT clinician and a certified juvenile court clinician. Primary clinical practice areas include adolescents and young adults with histories of trauma and major mental illness. She received her M.S.W. from Boston College and her Ph.D. from Smith SSW.

Melissa Coco
Faculty Field Adviser | Seminar Instructor
No bio information available.

Sophie Davis Cohen
Faculty Field Adviser
Sophie Davis-Cohen, LCSW (she/her) identifies as a white, heterosexual, cisgender woman. She is the daughter of immigrants to the US and identifies as bicultural (Iraqi and white/British). She holds a B.A. from Kenyon College and M.S.W. from Smith College SSW. Sophie has clinical social work experience at various Los Angeles treatment sites and served as Program Director at PCH Treatment Center. She completed a postgraduate fellowship at the non-profit Wright Institute Los Angeles, where she provided low-cost psychotherapy to people in Los Angeles and earned a Certificate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Sophie is currently in private practice in mid-city Los Angeles, working with individuals and couples.

Mary Curtin
Faculty Field Adviser
Mary Curtin, LICSW, is the Director of Professional Education at Smith College School for Social Work. She is a graduate of Smith College School for Social Work and Brown University. Mary has been a practicing clinician for over 20 years and has worked in inpatient, outpatient and residential settings. For over 10 years, Mary ran supported employment and supportive living programs for people with disabilities. She has a passion for social justice and much of her early career has been working with LGBTQ youth. She is the author of the article “Lesbian and Bisexual Girls in the Juvenile Justice System” published in the Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal and worked with the Center for Lesbian Rights as a member of the advisory board of the Model Standards project to develop standards of care for LGBTQ youth in the foster care and juvenile justice system.

Daniel Do
Faculty Field Adviser
Daniel Do (he/him/his) is a public health social worker and is a licensed independent clinical social worker (LICSW) in Massachusetts. Do received his M.S.W. and M.P.H. from Boston University, and is currently a doctoral candidate at Boston University School of Social Work. His work is focused on redressing the harms caused by interpersonal and systemic racism within the mental health system through training, and policy initiatives. He is also a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Research Scholar. Do has worked in leading large scale primary behavioral health care integration efforts in metro Boston and has a private practice geared towards LGBTQ+ individuals, Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latino, Multiracial and other persons of color, and people within this intersectional identity. At Smith SSW, Do teaches in Agency and Community Practice and Research.

Sarai Engel
Faculty Field Adviser
No bio information available.

Penelope Katz Facher
Faculty Field Adviser
Penelope Facher received her master's degree in Education from Pepperdine, master's degree in social work from UCLA, and doctorate in social work from The California Institute for Clinical Social Work. She has over 30 years of experience working with children, adolescents, adults, couples and families, in the fields of education and mental health. In addition to her clinical work, she works with schools, businesses and other organizations to educate on and support work In the areas of social justice and multicultural practice.

Emily Fischer-Rodríguez
Faculty Field Adviser
Emily Fischer-Rodríguez is a clinical social worker in private practice in Northampton, MA. In addition to her psychotherapy practice, she has been advising M.S.W. students at the Smith College School for Social Work since 2017, and served as an adjunct professor in the M.S.W. programs at both Wheelock College and Smith College School for Social Work. Additionally, she works as a consultant with a specialized focus on infant and early childhood mental health and anti-oppressive clinical practice with young children/families, and in that capacity partners with local and state child-serving entities. Emily's areas of clinical interest are infant and early childhood mental health, play therapy, and queer and trans*-identified clients and family constellation.

Laura Melano Flanagan
Faculty Field Adviser
In 1985 Laura Melano Flanagan began teaching the first "Integrative Seminar" in the M.S.W. program at Smith. This was followed by decades of developing and teaching the first-year required "Psychodynamic Theories of Individual Development" and what was then called the "Psychopathology" course. Coming full circle, she then taught her "Drive, Ego,Object, Self - Revisited" seminar for many years. She is one of the co-authors of Inside Out-Outside In, (1996) the fifth edition of which will be coming out in 2021. She has been a faculty field adviser for the last nine years - and loved her return to interaction with agency practice.

Laura has also taught in the Hunter and NYU Post Masters Clinical Programs. She holds an M.S.W. degree from Hunter College and a certificate from the Advanced Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in NYC.

Laura is in private practice in Brooklyn and Manhattan. She works with a large diversity of clients and does as much pro bono work as possible so that psychodynamic, often long-term psychotherapy, is not limited to privileged clients. Her interest has always been in learning how to best blend psychodynamic theory with intersectionality and how to improve her curiosity, support, and empathy.

In addition Laura works with young opera singers through coachings and Master Classes to help them deepen their psychological understanding of the characters they play. She is on the faculty of VoicExperience and has presented at Juilliard and the Mannes School of Music.

Michelle Fortunado-Kewin
Faculty Field Adviser | Seminar Instructor
Michelle Fortunado-Kewin, LCSW, (she/her) works with a Pupil Personnel Services Credential (PPSC) in School Social Work and Child Welfare and Attendance. Michelle identifies as a Filipinx-American, cisgender female. She is located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of her professional experience is working in K-12 schools in California. Michelle is also an FFA and a field seminar instructor at Smith. She's supervised Smith interns in the past and she used to run San Francisco Unified School District's mental health internship program.

Carolina Gonzalez
Seminar Instructor
No bio information available.

Alberto Guerrero
Faculty Field Adviser | Resident Faculty
Alberto Guerrero, M.S.W., Ph.D., (he/him) identifies as a Puerto Rican cisgender man. He teaches undergraduate and graduate students. Guerrero was recently appointed to a lecturer position at Smith SSW. His research is focused on the intersecting impact of trauma, legal system involvement and zero tolerance policies for adolescents who return to schools following an incarceration. His hope is to work with educational stakeholders to create school spaces that are adequately prepared to support students with carceral histories to resume and complete their education. He taught as a middle school teacher on the west side of Chicago and also worked as a clinician at an outpatient mental health facility in the South Bronx section of NYC before working as a forensic social worker in the New York City legal system. He received his M.S.W. from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, and his Ph.D. in Social Justice Education from UMass-Amherst.

Laurie Herzog
Faculty Field Adviser | Seminar Instructor
Laurie Herzog earned her M.S.W. (1985) and her Ph.D. (1997) from the Smith College School for Social Work. She began her career working in community mental health with young children and families, and has worked now for many years with adolescents and adults. Herzog maintains a private practice in Northampton, Massachusetts, providing psychotherapy and clinical consultation. For more than twenty years, Herzog has been a faculty field adviser and an adjunct professor at the Smith College School for Social Work, teaching in the Practice and Human Behavior in the Social Environment sequences, as well as in the Certificate Program for Advanced Supervision. In 2016 Laurie was appointed director of the Certificate Program in Advanced Clinical Supervision at Smith SSW. Laurie has also taught on the faculty of The Postgraduate Fellowship Program – West of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis.

J. Andrés Hoyos
Faculty Field Adviser | Seminar Instructor
J. Andrés Hoyos brings over two decades of clinical and administrative experience in the fields of mental health and social services working in private, public and non-profit sectors. Their expertise lie in the areas of direct clinical practice, program development, training and supervision through a social justice lens with particular emphasis on trauma, working with transgender, queer, lesbian, bisexual and gay communities, immigration and asylum, substance use and psychedelic integration therapy. Andrés has taught clinical social work practice, social work practice with immigrants and families, psychopathology-DSM 5 from an anti-oppressive perspective, working with Spanish speaking Latino immigrant families, decolonizing social work and global mental health. They have provided faculty advising for over 10 years and have lectured nationally and internationally on issues of trauma, recovery and resilience, mental health and wellbeing, community organizing and advocacy. Andrés provides integrative psychotherapy in their private practice in New York City and online, and currently provides training, participates in community organizing, and advocacy for diverse communities in Guatemala, Colombia and the US.

Shiva Jyoti
Faculty Field Adviser | Seminar Instructor
Shiva Jyoti is a psychotherapist in private practice, San Antonio, Texas. Her practice focuses on well-being and spirituality (adults) incorporating meditation practices, breathing and movement systems such as Tai Chi and Qigong. Her areas of interest include neurodevelopmental learning throughout the life span as well as through the lenses of gender and culture; somatic therapy; and strategies to address bias, injustice and oppression of race, gender, and culture.

Shiva Jyoti worked within the Department of Veterans Affairs for 40 years, in various positions, as a clinical social worker, social science researcher, program manager, supervisor, and as a clinical administrative coordinator. She was field supervisor for several graduate schools of social work, including Smith College (25 years). Currently she is adjunct professor, field faculty adviser (8 yrs.) and seminar instructor (4 yrs.) Smith College. Education: M.S.S.W. from Barry University, School of Social Work, Florida and B.S. Sociology, Loyola, MD. She identifies as Asian [Indonesian-German]; preferred pronouns – she, her, hers.

Hannah Karpman
Faculty Field Adviser | Resident Faculty
Dr. Hannah Karpman, M.S.W., Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the School for Social Work. She is the chair of the policy sequence, teaches in the research sequence and engages in field and research advising across both the Ph.D. and M.S.W. programs. Karpman’s career began as a clinician working with adolescents in acute care settings. She eventually became the program director of an acute care facility for young people, and then the director of quality for the umbrella agency. Her experience providing and managing clinical services is at the center of her current research, which focuses on marginalized and stigmatized youth and families and their interactions with formal helping systems.

Karpman’s research spans two major focal areas, each of which centers a particular population and its interaction with formal helping systems. In her first stream of research, Karpman examines the provision and quality of care for young people with serious mental illness within public sector systems (like Child Welfare and Medicaid). This line of scholarship includes:

The development, implementation, and evaluation of a large scale initiative to improve the quality of public sector mental health services for youth and families
The evaluation of several SAHMSA initiatives to improve the quality of systems of care for youth in various geographic regions
The articulation and evaluation of policy mechanisms to improve behavioral health care for youth in child welfare systems.

Karpman’s second stream of research centers the experiences of LGBTQ individuals and families and focuses on their interactions with health and behavioral health care systems. In 2012, she began the Known Donor Project, a mixed method study which investigates the family formation choices of queer families who use the sperm of friends, family members or acquaintances for conception, which expanded to create connections between and provide education to families considering this family structure. In 2019, she combined her two areas of interest to help develop a hybrid mental telehealth clinic for underserved LGBTQ youth, collaborate with a community based agency to begin the clinic and then engage in an evaluation of the result.

Karpman received her Ph.D. in social policy from the Heller School, where she was also the recipient of a training grant in alcohol health services research from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. She earned her M.S.W. from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was the recipient of the Fells Fellowship to study and intervene in community-based settings with youth with severe behavior problems. Her B.A. is from Mount Holyoke College, where she studied English and psychology.

Alex Kim
Seminar Instructor
Alex Kim(he/him/his) is a clinical social worker and will be a field seminar instructor at Smith College SSW. Alex currently works in the Counseling Center at Amherst College where he provides individual counseling, group counseling, consultation, and training. Other areas of interest include school mental health, internal family systems therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapies, anti-racism work in organizations and teams, restorative justice practices, videogame culture and gamer identity, and intersections of Asian-American and LGBTQ mental health.

Alex has also previously worked in school counseling (grades K-8) and community-based family outreach services. He has presented workshops at the NASW Massachusetts Symposium and the Asian-American Mental Health Forum in Boston. He now resides in Holyoke, Massachusetts but calls the Seattle area home, and is proudly the queer child of immigrant parents from Korea. He is a 2012 graduate of Smith School for Social Work.

Ann Kraybill
Faculty Field Adviser
Ann Kraybill, LICSW, is a 2005 graduate of Smith SSW. She has worked in community mental health and hospital settings, including 2 years on a DBT team and 13 years at the VA Medical Center in White River Junction, VT. In addition to providing outpatient psychotherapy, at the VA she supervised social work interns from Smith, psychiatry residents from Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and directed the WRJ VA social work graduate education program, overseeing the clinical placements and education of interns from a number of social work schools. Kraybill completed post-graduate studies at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and received a certificate in the Advanced Training Program in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in 2018. Following her departure from the VA in 2019 she entered full-time private practice in Norwich, Vermont, where she offers psychodynamic psychotherapy and clinical supervision. She has been a FFA for Smith since 2019.

Katelin Lewis-Kulin
Faculty Field Adviser
No bio information available.

Renee Lindquist
Faculty Field Adviser
No bio information available.

Aimee Maxwell
Faculty Field Adviser
Aimee Maxwell, LICSW is a Mental Health Consultant and Care Coordinator for the mental health department at Allina Health which is a large health care system in the Minneapolis and St. Paul Metro Area. She has an BA in psychology from Carleton College and an M.S.W. from Smith College School for Social Work. This is her fourth year as a faculty field advisor for Smith.
She has extensive experience working with children, adults and families throughout the lifespan in a variety of mental health care settings including inpatient psychiatric hospitals, day treatment programs, partial hospital programs, hospital-based outpatient mental health clinics and private practice in both Minnesota and California. Her areas of interest are in acute mental health, crisis stabilization, trauma, LGTBQ+, group therapy, family therapy, and navigation of complex community systems.

Lujuana Milton
Seminar Instructor
Lujuana Milton is a licensed independent clinical social worker (LICSW). She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) and a Masters of Social Work (M.S.W.) degree from Boston College. With over 14 years of clinical experience in the field, she has worked in a number of settings integrating a number of approaches. Since 2013, she developed and operates her own private group practice, South Shore Child and Family Counseling, LLC. Lujuana has taught at Fisher College in Boston, MA and currently is Adjunct Faculty at Boston College School of Social Work and Smith College School of Social Work.

Kim Monson
Seminar Instructor
Kim Monson ‘08, LICSW (she/her) is a lifelong resident of Western MA. She received her M.S.W. from Smith College SSW in 2008. Kim has spent the last 13 years working in Western Massachusetts with children, youth, adults and families in a variety of settings including: preschools, residential programs, and outpatient. Kim has leadership experience in the oversight of residential programs. She also has been an adjunct faculty in the Social Work Department at Westfield State College for six years. Kim recently transitioned to full time Private Practice and is teaching a 2nd year Field Seminar Course at SSW this year.

Lyana Murrell
Faculty Field Adviser
No bio information available.

Arianne Napier-White
Faculty Field Adviser
Arianne J. Napier-White, LMSW (she/her) is a clinical social worker with experience working in hospitals, city government, acute trauma settings, outpatient mental health clinics, and in communities disproportionately impacted by systemic and structural racism. Much of her work has focused on death/dying, end of life, and capacity building to plan, prepare, and respond to neighborhood based crises. She currently serves as an adjunct lecturer at NYU Silver School for Social Work. She holds a B.A. from Simmons University and M.S.W. from Smith College School for Social Work. She has returned to Smith College SSW to join the field office as an associate director of field education. She is from Brooklyn, NY, identifies as Black, queer, and cis-gender female, and currently lives in New Haven, CT, with her wife.

Ronjonette O’Bannon
Seminar Instructor
Ronjonette O’Bannon is a psychotherapist at Spelman College in Atlanta, GA, and operates an online private practice. O’Bannon imparts over sixteen years of clinical social work practice experience with her students, teaching as a seminar instructor at Smith College – M.S.W. Program and the University at Buffalo. O’Bannon’s interests include the reciprocal relationship between childhood maltreatment, adult revictimization, criminal justice reforms for women; mental health effects of discrimination and stigma among marginalized groups; and creating interventions that support socioeconomic growth and development among women globally.

O’Bannon earned a Ph.D. in social work at Smith College, an M.S.W. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and a postgraduate certificate in Trauma-Informed Clinical Care at SUNY Buffalo. Her professional experience includes many years advocating for policy changes for juvenile offenders and destigmatizing mental health care for women of color.

Arden O’Donnell
Faculty Field Adviser
Arden O’Donnell, LICSW, (she/her) identifies as a white, queer cisgender woman. She received her M.S.W. from Smith College SSW and is a current doctoral student at Boston University. She is a Palliative Care Social worker by training and has more than 15 years’ experience in palliative care both nationally and internationally, beginning with her work with HIV/AIDS patients in the United States and in Africa. Arden is doing research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and looking at the impact of COVID on adults living in public housing. She is the founder of Coalition for Courage, a nonprofit based in Zimbabwe that provides educational and psychosocial support for HIV orphans. At SSW, O’Donnell teaches Social Work and Healthcare: Tools of the Trade.

Peggy O'Neill
Faculty Field Adviser | Resident Faculty
Peggy O’Neill, Ph.D., LICSW, LCSW (she/her) identifies as a white cisgender woman and is a resident faculty member at Smithh SSW. O’Neill was a senior lecturer at Columbia University School of Social Work, and served as associate dean of academic affairs for Smith College SSW from 2015–2017. O’Neill has worked on co-developing, implementing and evaluating resiliency based, culturally and linguistically attuned psychoeducational groups and has 25 years of clinical and administrative social work practice in health/mental health care. O’Neill is particularly interested in deepening authentic connections and relationships across differences, with particular attention to challenging oppression and finding resilience in the face of trauma. She also has experience in Hospital EAP work, and in multiple for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. She continues to work as a clinical social worker/psychotherapist consultant.

Mariko Ono
Seminar Instructor
Mariko "Mod" Ono, LCSW (she/her) is an Asian American, queer identified social worker on the West Coastline. Mod received her M.S.W. from Smith College SSW in 2006 and has mainly worked at Kaiser Permanente in Northern California and Oregon in their mental health departments. Her experience includes individual and group psychotherapy, intensive outpatient case management, and ER crisis work. She has a background in DBT, CBT, Asian American identity development, queer identity, mindfulness, and crisis risk assessment. She has also worked for Smith College SSW as an adjunct faculty member since 2007. She is also a caregiver for her mother with Alzheimer's disease alongside her family members. Mod lives in Portland, Oregon with her wife, who is also a Smith College SSW alumna, and their daughter and 3 cats.

Judy Paz
Faculty Field Adviser | Seminar Instructor
Judy Saraiva Paz, LICSW, (she/her) identifies as a white cisgender woman. As a first generation immigrant, she also identifies as bicultural and trilingual. Judy received her M.S.W. from Boston College and has over twenty years of clinical experience. She has worked in foster care and adoption agencies, as well as residential programs, hospitals and community mental health settings. Much of her work has been in non-profit settings as a clinical director or supervisor, and consultant. She has been a faculty field adviser at Smith College School for Social Work since 2017, and is now also a field seminar instructor. Judy lives in Rhode Island with her husband and two children.

Janae Peters
Faculty Field Adviser | Seminar Instructor
Janae Peters, LMSW, entered the clinical social work world by way of her work as an educator at an independent boarding school. The residential and advising pieces of the work gave her insight into the student experience outside of the classroom and the English literature classroom created space for difficult conversations and witnessing transformation. A growing concern about identity development, social identity, social identity threat, and the impact of oppression and oppressive systems on achievement in the educational environment created in her a sense of urgency in working to learn how to improve the educational and identity development experience for all people and specifically for BIPOC students who have historically been excluded from and unsupported within these spaces. She graduated from Smith’s M.S.W. program in 2015 and has continued to bring social work into the educational environment. She held internships at a Crisis Center and an Outpatient Clinic and wrote her thesis on Black Identity development, the impact of trauma in development, and what’s at stake when students are not in environments where they can achieve a positive and cohesive sense of self. After Smith, she continued her work in education and integrated the clinical world into her work. She was an English teacher, house director, coach, and director of advising at Northfield Mount Hermon School and was recently the dean of student development and community life, school counselor, and had oversight over residential life at Indian Springs School, where she developed an advisory and peer mentoring program. She was a design team member for the Mastery School of Hawken in Cleveland, Ohio, and is a current founding faculty member. The school takes to scale a new model of education and engages in-depth with identity development in the educational environment.

Though she is not facilitating a perspectives seminar, perspectives run in and through her work, regardless of who is in the room. Consideration of intersectionality, critical race, social identity, trauma-informed, and person-in-environment theories is crucial to her work with people.

Beth Prullage
Faculty Field Adviser | Seminar Instructor
Beth Prullage is a psychotherapist at University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she works in the college counseling center. She has taught the Smith College School for Social Work since 2007, and has taught the Second Year Field Seminar, Group Therapy and Family Therapy: Narrative approaches in the 2020-2021 school year. Prullage has been a faculty field advisor since 2009, and currently works with students and agencies in NYC.

Martha Reeves
Faculty Field Adviser
No bio information available.

Linda Reis
Faculty Field Adviser
Linda Reis is an alum of the Smith College School for Social Work and has been a faculty field advisor since 1994. In addition to a part-time private practice, she worked for 35 years at Community Mental Health agencies directing multi-disciplinary clinical teams working with traumatized youth and families in a range of programs, including outpatient, intensive home-based, and day treatment, as well as supervising social work students from various schools of social work. Following retirement as the director of children’s services at the Carson Center in Westfield, Linda continues to work as a community volunteer for the MA Department of Children and Families and in the children’s theater program at the Amherst Cinema.

Jessica Ricardo
Seminar Instructor
Jessica Ricardo, LICSW was raised in Rhode Island and currently lives and works in Providence. She is the daughter of Cuban immigrants and identifies as both Black and Afro-Latina. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard College in sociology and human rights studies, after which she took a bit of a zig-zagging path to social work. That path began in the woods where she taught outdoor education. Jessica then moved on to providing in-home services to children with varying developmental disabilities, and then on to working as an advocate and Transitional Housing Coordinator at a local domestic violence agency.

Since graduating from Smith’s M.S.W. program in 2015, Jessica worked with youth in an acute care residential setting as well as in a medical hospital focusing on end of life work. Jessica is now works in her own private practice where she focuses on trauma work, and specifically racial trauma work, with primarily BIPOC and LGBTQ+ identified clients in both English and Spanish. Jessica has a strong interest in exploring, both, the ongoing need for, and the history of oppressed communities to heal and liberate themselves from within.

Lauren Montemuro Rode
Faculty Field Adviser
Lauren Montemuro-Rode received her M.S.W. with a gerontology concentration in 2013 from Washington University in St. Louis. Lauren Montemuro-Rode worked as a research assistant at the Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging on projects related to cross-national aging, senior housing community development efforts, and aging friendly community research. Lauren Montemuro-Rode also has extensive clinical experience related to aging, medical, and hospice care. While working towards her Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr College, Lauren Montemuro-Rode teaches in the Research Methods sequence. Lauren Montemuro-Rode joined the Faculty Field Advising team at Smith in 2018. She is interested in expanding research on advance care planning for her dissertation research.

Michael J. “Mick” Rogers
Faculty Field Adviser
Mick graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill’s M.S.W. program in 1980 and worked with children (on Medicaid) and their families for 30 years and then with college students when he started his Ph.D. program at Smith (because he needed his summers to be on campus.) Prior to earning his Ph.D., he earned Smith’s Advanced Clinical Supervisor Certificate and his American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists' Approved Supervisor Certificate.

Mick has volunteered at various states' clinical societies. Since serving as California’s president of the California Society for Clinical Social Work he chairs its ethics committee and its CEU approval committees. As a clinical social worker he provided therapy, served as clinical director, executive director and board member.

For the last several years he taught Second Year Practice at Smith, and Transitioning from Field Instructor to Clinical Supervisor at Sacramento State University.

Mick’s practice interests include college students with complex trauma, couples counseling using Emotionally Focused Therapy and treating California clinicians whose licenses are suspended.

Peter Rosenmeier
Faculty Field Adviser
Peter Rosenmeier (he, him) is the clinical director of the Gifford School, in Weston, MA, and has been a field supervisor, site director, and FFA for twenty years. His primary areas of practice include adolescents, trauma, school-based clinical practice, family systems work, and multidisciplinary team building. Developing experiential and milieu-based psychodynamic treatment environments is a focus for him. Peter holds a B.A. in sociology from Amherst College (1990) and an M.S.W. from Smith (1998).

Susie Ryder
Faculty Field Adviser
Susie Ryder, LCSW, LAC is the director of undergraduate and graduate Field Education at MSU Denver. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from Oberlin College. She received her Master of Social Work Degree at Smith College School for Social Work and is a Licensed Addiction Counselor. She worked for 7 years at Cleo Wallace Centers in various positions including Inpatient Social Worker, Residential Clinician, Inpatient Manager and Clinical Director. Susie then continued her work with children, adolescents and families at Mental Health Partners for 16 years. At Mental Health Partners, she was the Solution Focused Brief Therapy trainer for the center for several years. She co-led a Solution Focused Brief Therapy training program in the community in Boulder, Colorado. At Mental Health Partners she was the Senior Program Manager for the Prevention/Intervention and School Based Programs in the Boulder Valley and St. Vrain School Districts with oversight of 40 therapists in 53 schools. Susie has been working in the Boulder office of Michele Weiner-Davis at the Divorce Busting Center providing individual and couple’s therapy. She has been a Faculty Field Advisor, Admissions Reader, Integrative Seminar co-leader and Lecturer in the Continuing Education for Advanced Clinician program at Smith College School for Social Work. She currently serves on the board of a Peer Educator Suicide Prevention program for adolescents and offers presentations in Boulder County on this topic.

Silvia Sandoval
Faculty Field Adviser
Silvia has been in practice for 20 years serving marginalized communities and populations. She is currently the director of behavioral health and clinical supervisor at the Mission Neighborhood Health Center (MNHC), a new placement for fall 2021 for Smith SSW in the Bay area. She received her M.S.W. from the National School of Social Service at Catholic University of America and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Smith College School for Social Work and expected to graduate this summer. Sandoval maintains a part-time private consultation and psychotherapy practice with an emphasis on trans mental health care for individuals and couples who identify as POC, and is a mentor in the Mentoring Program of the SF Coalition for Clinical Social Work Society for new social workers interested in practicing through a psychodynamic lens. She has held adjunct faculty positions in the schools for social work at Southern Connecticut State University and most recently at San Francisco State University. Sandoval plans to join the SCSSW adjunct faculty in addition to hosting SSW students at MNHC.

Sara Schieffelin
Faculty Field Adviser
Sara Schieffelin, LICSW, (she/her/hers), a Smith College School for Social Work alumna, has worked with children, adolescents, families and adults in Massachusetts, Colorado and Thailand. She has worked in outreach, community mental health and school settings, and currently has a private practice and does consulting, teaching and training. Schieffelin is a member of the international organization Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) and has been teaching MI since 2013. She lives with her husband and son in Florence, Massachusetts.

Maytal Schmidt
Faculty Field Adviser
Maytal Schmidt (she/her) identifies as a white, cisgender woman. She has conducted individual psychotherapy and group therapy with children, adolescents and adults domestically and internationally, focusing on sexual violence, childhood trauma, LGBTQIA+ identities, HIV, substance use, criminal thinking and persistent mental health issues. Maytal has provided sex offense specific therapy for juveniles and adults who have engaged in sexually abusive behavior for over seven years and with people who have survived sexual assault for over 15 years. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from Oberlin College in 2010 where she majored in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, Religion and African American Studies and her Master’s degree from Smith College School for Social Work in 2015. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Georgia and Colorado.

Lili Schwan-Rosenwald
Faculty Field Adviser
Lili Schwan-Rosenwald, LICSW (she/her) identifies as a white lesbian cisgender woman. She received her M.S.W. from Smith College SSW. After graduation she worked as a therapist at MCI-Treatment Center as well as providing outpatient mandated therapy for sexual offenders. For the past 10 years Lili has worked at the Edinburg Center and is currently a service director, running several programs with individuals who have been diagnosed with chronic and persistent mental health challenges. Lili has extensive leadership and clinical experience in community mental health, outreach, forensic social work, hospital social work, crisis intervention, case management, crisis evaluation, individual and group work. Lili developed and runs the Edinburg Center All Agency Internship Program after over 10 years of experience in supervision including with many students from Smith SSW. Lili is also a faculty field adviser for Smith SSW.

Phebe Sessions
Faculty Field Adviser | Professor Emerita
Sessions' practice and research background includes both psychodynamic and family therapy theories and practice models.

At Smith, Sessions taught courses in social work practice with individuals and families; family theory; family therapy; clinical practice in low income communities; couples’ therapy; clinical social work practice; private troubles and public issues: the social construction of assessment; and social work practice with older adults.

Sessions received both her bachelor’s degree and M.S.W. from Smith College. She received her Ph.D. from Brandeis University, Florence Heller School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare. She retired from the Smith College School for Social Work in June 2018.

Christopher Shanky
Faculty Field Adviser
Christopher Shanky, LICSW (he/him) has been a youth worker, supervisor, clinic director, social work professor and most prominently a psychotherapist for over 35 years. He has extensive training in the following psychotherapies: attachment based, trauma informed, family systems, strength based, and psychodynamic theory.

Christopher has a master's degree in social work from Yeshiva University, three years of graduate studies in psychology from Long Island University and a bachelor of science in film studies from Northwestern University.

LaTasha Smith
Seminar Instructor
No bio information available.

Tanita Teagle
Faculty Field Adviser
Tanita Teagle, LCSW earned her bachelor of sociology from Spelman College in 1997 and her master of clinical social work from Smith College School for Social Work in 1999. Tanita's career encompasses work in mental health, addictive disease and disability services. Over her almost twenty-two year career, Tanita has held various leadership positions in public and private social service agencies while maintaining a private practice and consulting business. She has served the Smith College SSW community as a former president of the alumni association. She believes that healing is a collaborative effort and focuses much of her work in creating a village of support for those she serves.

Traneika Turner-Wentt
Faculty Field Adviser
Dr. Traneika Turner-Wentt, is a mental wellness clinician and spiritual counselor with two decades of experience in hospital and mental healthcare. She manages the Prevention and Testing Unit for a large safetynet hospital in partnership with the Department of State Health Services. She is committed to empowering vulnerable patient populations and engaging healthcare providers through increased awareness and education. For several years she served as clinical director and agency administrator for a children and family service agency specializing in foster care and adoptions. Her interests also include population health, social determinants of health and spirituality.

Turner-Wentt is author of the personal-practice book Faithfully Focused, Your Four Step Guide To Creating Your Best Life Now. She holds a doctorate degree in clinical practice and leadership in social work from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, a master’s degree in social work from Smith College and a bachelor's degree in social work from the University of North Texas.

Ashley Varner
Faculty Field Adviser
Dr. Ashley Varner is an adjunct assistant professor at Smith College School for Social Work and a clinical social worker in the neurology division of Emory University's School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. She is currently a faculty field adviser and has taught for the palliative and end of life care certificate program at Smith College School for Social Work. Her areas of social work interest include caregiving, palliative and end of life care, oncology and brain tumors, Alzheimer's Disease and other causes of dementia, and medical ethics.

Varner holds a master's degree in social work from Smith College School for Social Work, a Ph.D. in social work from The Catholic University of America, and a master's in the business of medicine from Johns Hopkins University.

Christopher Vaughan
Faculty Field Adviser
Dr. Vaughan received his B.A. in psychology and M.S.W. from the University of Maryland and his Ph.D. from the Smith College School for Social Work in 2006. He also holds certificates in supervision from Smith College SSW as well as in marriage and family therapy from The Tavistock Institute. He has been adjunct faculty at Smith College SSW since 2011, primarily as a faculty field adviser. His clinical work began as a medical social worker in the areas of HIV/AIDS in the late 80s. This involved work in both inpatient and home-based care. He also ran an HIV counseling and testing program in the early 90s. He has maintained a full time private practice in Washington, DC and Eagle County, Colorado providing individual, couples and group psychotherapy for over 25 years. Areas of interest include evolutionary psychology, psychodynamic theory and neurobiology as well as the process of how students develop a sense of professional identity. Throughout his professional life, Vaughan has been committed to racial justice issues and has led numerous racial justice workshops for individuals and small organizations. For the last 10 years, he has been a facilitator for Executive Directors of Local (DC) and National LGBTQIA organizations. As part of his self care, he is an avid runner and triathlete completing eight Ironman and 14 marathons.

JaLisa Williams
Faculty Field Adviser
JaLisa Williams, LCSW is a fierce therapist, educator and curator who has worked to create intentional spaces and conversations regarding self-care, diversity and liberation. Within both roles as an educator and therapist, JaLisa enjoys the ability to help others grow within themselves and their understanding of the world. As a college professor, she challenges conventional ways of teaching by engaging students in experiences that shift their perspective and understandings of their own social positioning. Based in Denver, she has worked at MSU Denver, Regis University and University of Denver teaching courses surrounding identity, power, systemic oppression and creative lens to engage in change. Her current research interests lie in transformational justice and social accountability, mindfulness and embodiment, racial trauma and healing and radical pedagogies. She is currently a mindfulness educator and therapist working with Black and other folks of color ready to put intention and action together to make magic.

Keshia Williams
Faculty Field Adviser
Keshia Williams, LCSW (Your Grace,They/She) is a clinical consultant and steward of Black love and care with 20 years of diverse clinical, teaching and leadership experiences in Canada and the United States. Williams is the creator of the Black Love and Care Ethic, an invitational framework that holds the intention and willingness to disrupt the impacts of anti-black racism from a place that centers the vastness of what is possible when the needs, dreams, and abundance of Blackness and Black peoples are tended to and affirmed. Williams is deeply committed to fugitive family making and throwing pottery as primary freedom practices while minding the business of living their life through The Discovery Initiative.

Crystal Yarborough
Faculty Field Adviser
Crystal Yarborough is a licensed clinical social worker and licensed clinical addictions specialist. She currently works as a mental health social worker at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Her areas of interest include depression and trauma-focused mental health interventions for African Americans, evidence-based treatment approaches for service members, Veterans and their families, and co-occurring treatment interventions for PTSD and substance use disorders.

Yarborough has worked in a variety of clinical settings during her career, including inpatient mental health facilities, residential substance abuse treatment centers, community-based mental health agencies and as an army substance abuse counselor in North Carolina. She holds a M.S.W. from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ann Zamarron
Faculty Field Adviser
No bio information available.

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