Sherry Saturno is a national award social worker and dually licensed as a Nursing Home Administrator and Clinical Social Worker. She holds Master's degrees from Columbia and Long Island Universities. Sherry is a Stanford Certified Project Manager and completed a national post graduate fellowship at New York University Silver School of Social Work. She previously wrote and produced a national award winning documentary short film called "Human Investment", and has been published in Social Work Today and The New Social Worker Magazines.

Amanda Aykanian is a doctoral candidate at the University at Albany School of Social Welfare. She is also a Research Associate at Advocates for Human Potential in Albany, NY and serves as the Research and Project Lead for the National Center for Excellence in Homeless Services. She has more than 10 years of experience in community-based process and outcome evaluations, with expertise in quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. Broadly, her research interests include program and policy implementation, service system dynamics, the criminalization of homelessness, and the mobility of people experiencing homelessness. Her most recent work focuses on exploring the relationship between service use and the geographic mobility of people experiencing homelessness.

Elizabeth Cronin, Director of the NYS Office of Victim Services (OVS), sat down with co-host Alyssa Lotmore to discuss why the agency is an important resource in the communities around the State. January is also Human Trafficking Awareness Month and OVS is hosting a film screening on the topic on the UAlbany campus.

Dr. Loretta Pyles and Dr. Juliana Svistova, authors of 'Production of Disaster and Recovery in Post-Earthquake Haiti: Disaster Industrial Complex', discuss how media, policy, and NGO discourses created fertile conditions for the disaster industrial complex to flourish, including profiteering, non-profiteering, and militarized humanitarianism, all of which further disenfranchised Haitian citizen-survivors. At the same time, the authors show how Haiti was ripe with resistance, mutual aid, and community building.

Loretta Pyles, PhD, is Professor at the School of Social Welfare at the University at Albany and also a yoga and meditation teacher, workshop leader, and organizational consultant. Her new book is 'Healing Justice: Holistic Self-Care for Change Makers'. She is also the author of 'Progressive Community Organizing: Reflective Practice in a Globalizing World' and co-editor of 'Holistic Engagement: Transformative Social Work Education in the 21st Century'.

Dr. Mary McCarthy, of UAlbany School of Social Welfare, discusses the importance of college students registering to vote and participating in elections. She speaks about the importance of voting to political action, community power and social justice.

Joe Bonilla, managing partner and co-founder of Relentless Awareness, joined us for an engaging and informative discussion about voting, election polling and how campaigns are evolving.

Ogden Rogers, Ph.D. being interviewed on the SOCIAL WORKERS radio talk show. Originally broadcast on December 11, 2014 on WCDB 90.9 FM at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Dr. Ogden Rogers, author of Beginnings, Middles, and Ends: Sideways Stories on the Art & Soul of Social Work

Cessie Alfonso, a licensed social worker, speaks about her career as a forensic social worker who focused on death penalty cases. In this segment, Cessie talks about how she got into the forensic social work career, how new social workers can explore this specialization, and what this career is really like.

Our yearning to connect and belong is primal. The force that pushes and pulls one towards another is love. Unhealthy patterns from the past whether due to loss, war, abuse, deprivation or other traumas, can spread across generations and cause the heart to shut down. If left unattended, this disruption in the flow moves into the shadows and echoes through the family landscape often emerging in the present as an illness, emotional difficulties, addictions, anxiety depression, and broken relationships.

With its roots in Family Sculpting, Family Systems Theory and Psychodrama and Gestalt Therapy, Family Constellations is a unique, phenomenological approach to resolving generational trauma. A kind of "living map," it provides a creative and profound way of seeing into the hidden dynamics that shape our lives and the suffering we experience. It has the potential to touch us on a deep energetic level, to find the movements necessary unblock the flow of love, to open the heart, and to reconnect with those we love past and present. This work deepens the respect for the mystery of life and the forces that shape it.

Bill Mannle, LMFT is a Gestalt and Marriage & Family Therapist in private practice in Connecticut, USA. He first trained in Family Constellations between 2003-2005. He has since conducted seminars in Connecticut, New York, California, Germany, Denmark, Australia, Mexico, Spain, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, and Croatia. He has led workshops in schools for both adolescents and teachers and is currently exploring Constellations as a method of supervision.

Social issues faced by communities are increasingly complex, transcending the boundaries of any one agency, organization or profession. Across the country and the world, communities are looking for new and innovative ways to leverage existing resources in ways that better meet the needs of marginalized and disadvantaged populations. Though working across boundaries – whether professional or organizational – offer new opportunities to develop strong communities, it also comes with the challenges inherent to group-based work. The collective impact approach provides a framework and best practices for navigating collaborative work and its challenges.