Honoring Our Social Work Leaders

The Social Work Section of the Academy cordially invites you to attend its annual Honoring Our Social Work Leaders event that honors a Lifetime Leader and an Emerging Leader. Please plan to join us as we honor Patricia J. Volland for her lifetime leadership and acknowledge Nancy Giunta as an emerging leader.  We encourage you to bring your social work colleagues and students to this event and introduce them to the Academy and our Social Work Section.

Lifetime Leadership – Patricia J. Volland, MSW, MBA
Ms. Volland has focused her career in healthcare on Improving quality of care for older adults; the development of policies/practice of comprehensive care coordination in support of the integration of health/medicine with long-term and social supports, and the development of models of interprofessional education and practice.

Ms. Volland launched the Social Work Leadership Institute (SWLI) as a national initiative working to ensure that America’s older adults receive the care they need to remain in charge of their lives and live life to the fullest. She has been leading national education, policy and research efforts to advance our society’s ability to support older adults in a productive and coordinated manner. These efforts include:

Ms. Volland was most recently a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. Prior to joining the Silberman School of Social Work, she was at the New York Academy of Medicine first as the Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration and then as Senior Vice President for Strategy and Business Development and the Director of the Social Work Leadership Institute. Prior to joining the New York Academy of Medicine, Ms. Volland spent 25 years as a hospital administrator. She has held administrative and clinical social work positions at several academic medical centers, including 15 years at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. She has served as National President and board member of the Society for Social Work Administrators in Health Care.

She serves on the boards of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, and the Altman Foundation. She is an emeritus member of the Board of the Planned Parenthood of New York City and is the former Chair of the Board.  She previously served as treasurer of the board of the American Society on Aging.

Ms. Volland is a recipient of numerous awards. She is a Fellow of The New York Academy of Medicine and has edited and published in numerous scholarly journals and books. She has an MBA from Loyola College, an MSW from San Diego State University, and a BA in Sociology from Ottawa University.

Emerging Leader – Nancy Giunta, PhD, MSW
Nancy Giunta is an Associate Professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, where she directs Silberman Aging, a Hartford Center of Excellence in Diverse Aging. Her practice experience in the field of aging spans 20 years and includes direct service, advocacy, administration and research focused on long-term services and supports for older adults and people with disabilities. Dr. Giunta teaches aging policy, community organizing, and research classes and collaborates with social service agencies locally and nationally on a variety of evaluation and technical assistance projects. Her scholarship examines interventions to address service access inequities among older adults and the people who care for them. Dr. Giunta serves as evaluator for the National Resource Center on LGBT Aging, an initiative led by Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE). She was a guest co-editor, along with Dr. Noell Rowan, of the 2014 special triple issue of the Journal of Gerontological Social Work on LGBT Aging. She also recently published The Collective Spirit of Aging Across Cultures with Halaevalu Vakalahi and Gaynell Simpson. She is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the New York Academy of Medicine as well as a John A. Hartford Faculty Scholar in Geriatric Social Work and an Advisory Board Member of the LGBT Social Science & Public Policy Center at Hunter College.