WASHINGTON, D.C. — Trailblazing social worker Joan Levy Zlotnik, PhD, 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 mental health needs of children and society’s most fragile communities.
Her scholarship was 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 created the blueprint for training programs that taught social work students about Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, which provides federal reimbursement for foster care. She is credited with many of the models and practices that social workers use today 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 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 former 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.
She has been a faculty member at the schools of social work at George Mason University, the University of Maryland, Washington University, and Virginia Commonwealth University. In the late 1970s, she served as the director of mental retardation at the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health.
She began her career 50 years ago as a clinical social worker at Belchertown State School in West Massachusetts.
After receiving her BA in psychology, Zlotnik earned an MSSW in 1974 and a PhD in social work in 1998.
Throughout her career, Zlotnik has been lauded for forging strategic partnerships and directing foundation-funded projects from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 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 and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She also partnered with the federal government to include mental health and substance abuse provisions in the Affordable Care Act.
It is our privilege to present this award to her.