Ramona Denby-Brinson, PhD, ACSW, LMSW
Backstory
By Sue Coyle
Ramona Denby-Brinson, PhD, ACSW, LMSW, says
that in her family, public service was an expectation, not only for her but for
her nine siblings as well. “Our parents were so oriented and active around
public service and with our community in Las Vegas,” Denby-Brinson recalls. “It
was instilled in us early on. Public service was going to be our thing.” Her
siblings became educators, medical practitioners and police officers, and
Denby-Brinson became a social worker.
One of her first jobs in the profession was at a shelter
serving adolescent boys. It was a challenge, she remembers, but it was also one
of the reasons she fell in love with social work, particularly as the years
went on and she would run into some of the young men the shelter had served.
“It let me know that it may be small wins along the way, and you don’t always
see it while you’re working with the client, but people have such an incredible
capacity to do well and turn their
life around.”
It was a different position later on, as a
medical social worker in an ER, that inspired Denby-Brinson to pursue her PhD,
research and academia professionally. The situations, obstacles and
frustrations her patients faced “sparked my curiosity from a research
standpoint about what works and how can we change the systems to make them work
better.”
Today, as dean and Wallace
H. Kuralt Sr. Distinguished Professor of Public Welfare Policy and
Administration, Denby-Brinson, sees her work as “an extension of the work I did
when I was a practitioner,” she says. “[Academia] is a way the profession gets
to continue to recreate i
tself,
because largely we’re in the job of developing future social workers. We can
continue to see how our profession grows through our students.”
Denby-Brinson also continues to do research,
leading the KinCarolina project team. “We do intervention research to support
caregivers who are raising their relative kids, to keep kids safe, to keep kids
out of foster care, and to make sure we are preventing maltreatment,” she
explains.
Throughout
her career, Denby-Brinson says she has benefitted from lifelong mentors, namely
Esther Langston, PhD, MSW, LCSW, and Satish Sharma, PhD. “I still think about
their lessons, and how my career wouldn’t be what it is without their early
support.”
Outside of work, Denby-Brinson spends time with her three,
now young adult, children. “Parenting at this age is really special,” she says,
remarking that she loves to travel, cook and simply spend time with them.