WASHINGTON, D.C. — Trailblazing social worker Joan Levy Zlotnik, PhD, ACSW is the recipient of the 2025 Knee/Wittman Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Social Workers Foundation (NASWF). Zlotnik is being honored for her efforts in improving child welfare services and bringing awareness to the health and mental health needs of children and society’s most fragile communities.
Her scholarship and policy advocacy strengthened the foundation for a generation of social work students, helping them understand the impact of trauma, separation, parental behavioral health problems, and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES).
Zlotnik played a critical role in promoting the blueprint for training programs, supported through Title IV-E of the Social Security Act that strengthened child welfare curriculum and increased the number of social work students that pursue child welfare careers. She is credited with efforts to enhance curriculum to educate social workers in the fields of child welfare, aging, and health and mental health care.
The Knee/Wittman Lifetime Achievement Award is named for two other pioneering social workers, Ruth Knee (1920–2008) and Milton Wittman (1915–1994). It is presented to an individual or group that has made a significant impact on professional standards, national health and mental health public policy, or program models.
An NASW Social Work Pioneer®, Zlotnik was a senior consultant for the National Association of Social Workers and founding director for the Social Work Policy Institute at NASWF before becoming an independent consultant.
Previously, she served as the executive director at the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research. She also worked as the director of special projects at the Council on Social Work Education and staff director of the NASW Family Commission.
She has taught social work at George Mason University, the University of Maryland, Washington University, and Virginia Commonwealth University. In the late 1970s, she served as area director for mental retardation services at the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health.
She began her career 50 years ago as a clinical social worker at Belchertown State School in western Massachusetts.
After receiving her BA in psychology from the University of Rochester, Zlotnik earned an MSSW in 1974 from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a PhD in social work in 1998 from the University of Maryland.
Throughout her career, Zlotnik has been lauded for forging strategic partnerships and directing foundation and federal-funded projects from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Casey Family Programs, the John A. Hartford Foundation, Kellogg, Ford Foundation, Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Cancer Institute, Children’s Bureau, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She also advocated with the federal government and Congress to include mental health and substance abuse provisions in the Affordable Care Act and to strengthen regulations for nursing homes.
It is our privilege to present this award to her.
See her full bio