Steve de Shazer
1940 - 2005 (65 years)
Steve de Shazer was a psychotherapist, author, and developer and pioneer of solution focused brief therapy. In 1978, he founded the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with his wife Insoo Kim Berg.
Go to ProfileJane Addams
1860 - 1935 (75 years)
Laura Jane Addams was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage in the United States and advocated for world peace. She co-founded Chicago's Hull House, one of America's most famous settlement houses. In 1910, Addams was awarded an honorary master of arts degree from Yale University, becoming the first woman to receive an honorary degree from the school. In 1920, she was a co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union .
Go to ProfileMary Richmond
1861 - 1928 (67 years)
Mary Ellen Richmond was an American social work pioneer. She is regarded as the mother of professional social work along with Jane Addams. She founded social case work, the first method of social work and was herself a Caseworker.
Go to ProfileAna Aslan
1897 - 1988 (91 years)
Ana Aslan was a Romanian biologist and physician, specialist in gerontology, academician from 1974 and the director of the National Institute of Geriatrics and Gerontology . Early life Ana was the youngest of four children, two brothers and two sisters, born to Margarit and Sofia Aslan. Ana was said to be a very intellectual child, learning to read and write already by age four. At the age of 13, her father died, and her family then moved to Bucharest, Romania. It was in Bucharest where she began her studies. She graduated from the Central School of Bucharest in 1915. The premature death of her father, whom she was close to, was said to be the reason she wanted to become a physician.
Go to ProfileBertha Reynolds
1887 - 1978 (91 years)
Bertha Capen Reynolds was an American social worker who was influential in the creation of strength-based practice, radical social work and critical social work, among others. Early life and education Bertha Capen Reynolds born in Brockton, Massachusetts, on December 11, 1887 to Mary Reynolds and Franklin Stewart Reynolds. Her father died while she was a young child, and she moved with her mother to Boston to work as a teacher.
Go to ProfileVirginia Satir
1916 - 1988 (72 years)
Virginia Satir was an American author and psychotherapist, recognized for her approach to family therapy. Her pioneering work in the field of family reconstruction therapy honored her with the title "Mother of Family Therapy". Her most well-known books are Conjoint Family Therapy, 1964, Peoplemaking, 1972, and The New Peoplemaking, 1988.
Go to ProfileHerbert Laming, Baron Laming
1936 - Present (86 years)
William Herbert Laming, Baron Laming, is a British social worker and member of the House of Lords. He served as Convenor of the Crossbench Peers from 2011 to 2015 and as Chairman of Committees from 2015 to 2016.
Go to ProfileBrené Brown
1965 - Present (57 years)
Casandra Brené Brown is an American research professor, lecturer, author, and podcast host. Brown is known in particular for her research on shame, vulnerability, and leadership. A long-time researcher and academic, Brown became famous following a widely viewed TED talk in 2010. Since then she has written six number-one New York Times bestselling books, hosts two podcasts and has filmed a lecture for Netflix.
Go to ProfileAnu Aga
1942 - Present (80 years)
Anu Aga is an Indian billionaire businesswoman and social worker who led Thermax, an energy and environment engineering business, as its chairperson from 1996 to 2004. She was among the eight richest Indian women, and in 2007 was part of 40 Richest Indians by net worth according to Forbes magazine. She was awarded with the Mumbai Women of the Decade Achievers Award by ALL Ladies League, the all ladies wing of ASSOCHAM.
Go to ProfileDorothy Height
1912 - 2010 (98 years)
Dorothy Irene Height was an African American civil rights and women's rights activist. She focused on the issues of African American women, including unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness. Height is credited as the first leader in the civil rights movement to recognize inequality for women and African Americans as problems that should be considered as a whole. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years.
Go to ProfileJoyce Lishman
1947 - 2021 (74 years)
Joyce Lishman the first woman Professor at Robert Gordon University, was a leader in social work education and research. Education and career Lishman was the first pupil from her girls' high school in Normanton to be admitted to Oxford University, where she studied philosophy, politics and economics, graduating in 1968. She then went to study social studies and social work at Edinburgh University graduating in 1970, and practiced as a social worker in child and family psychology. This experience she built on later in her career by developing a new social work service for children suffering ...
Go to ProfileGrace Coyle
1892 - 1962 (70 years)
Grace Longwell Coyle was a highly influential American thinker in the area of social work with groups. She wrote important books on the subject, and had great influence on the development of teaching group work concepts.
Go to ProfileBaba Amte
1914 - 2008 (94 years)
Murlidhar Devidas Amte, popularly known as Baba Amte, was an Indian social worker and social activist known particularly for his work for the rehabilitation and empowerment of people suffering from leprosy. He has received numerous awards and prizes including the Padma Vibhushan, the Dr. Ambedkar International Award, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the Templeton Prize and the Jamnalal Bajaj Award. He is also known as the modern Gandhi of India.
Go to ProfileJanet B. W. Williams
1947 - Present (75 years)
Janet B. W. Williams is an American social worker who focuses on the diagnosis and assessment of mental disorders. She is Professor Emerita of Clinical Psychiatric Social Work at Columbia University. She was a major force in writing the PHQ-9, a 9-question instrument given to patients in a primary care setting to screen for the presence and severity of depression.
Go to ProfileEdith Abbott
1876 - 1957 (81 years)
Edith Abbott was an American economist, statistician, social worker, educator, and author. Abbott was born in Grand Island, Nebraska. Abbott was a pioneer in the profession of social work with an educational background in economics. She was a leading activist in social reform with the ideals that humanitarianism needed to be embedded in education. Abbott was also in charge of implementing social work studies to the graduate level. Though she was met with resistance on her work with social reform at the University of Chicago, she ultimately was successful and was elected as the school's dean in 1924, making her the first female dean in the United States.
Go to ProfileDavid Epston
1944 - Present (78 years)
David Epston is a New Zealand therapist, co-director of the Family Therapy Centre in Auckland, New Zealand, Visiting Professor at the John F. Kennedy University, an honorary clinical lecturer in the Department of Social Work, University of Melbourne, and an affiliate faculty member in the Ph.D program in Couple and Family Therapy at North Dakota State University. Epston and his late friend and colleague Michael White are known as originators of narrative therapy.
Go to ProfilePaula Allen-Meares
1948 - Present (74 years)
Paula G. Allen-Meares is an American academic who served as the chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago from 2009 to 2015. She has a background in social work. Allen-Meares was raised in Buffalo, New York. She completed her undergraduate education at SUNY Buffalo, and then undertook postgraduate studies in social work at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign . While completing her doctorate, she worked for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. She joined the UIUC faculty in 1975, and in 1990 was made dean of the School of Social Work. In 1993, Allen-Meares joined the University of Michigan as dean of the School of Social Work.
Go to ProfileBelleruth Naparstek
1942 - Present (80 years)
Belleruth Naparstek is an American social worker, author, teacher and the producer of a guided imagery library of self-administered audio programs. She did her undergraduate and graduate work at University of Chicago in social work, and then worked in hospitals and clinics, then taught at Case Western Reserve University. She eventually developed guided imagery tapes, which have been used in some hospitals and clinics that have adopted alternative medicine practices as adjuvant therapies.
Go to ProfileJames Birren
1918 - 2016 (98 years)
James E. Birren was one of the founders of the organized field of gerontology. He was a past president of The Gerontological Society of America, and author of over 250 publications. Personal life Birren was born on April 4, 1918 in Chicago. With the original intent to study engineering, Birren enrolled in Wright Junior College to study technical subjects. Birren changed his mind due to the Great Depression in America and decided to transfer to Chicago Teachers College to pursue what he thought to be a more practical career. It was there he took his first course in psychology, and he was encou...
Go to ProfileMedha Patkar
1954 - Present (68 years)
Medha Patkar is an Indian social activist working on various crucial political and economic issues raised by tribals, dalits, farmers, labourers and women facing injustice in India. She is an alumnus of TISS, a premier institute of social science research in India.
Go to ProfileMargaret Frere
1863 - 1961 (98 years)
Margaret Frere was a British school manager and welfare worker who established the model for a school care service that was adopted throughout London's elementary schools. Life Frere was born in the part of London's west end known as Bloomsbury. Her parents were Adelaide Ellen and Bartle John Laurie Frere who was a solicitor.
Go to ProfileGrace Abbott
1878 - 1939 (61 years)
Grace Abbott was an American social worker who specifically worked in improving the rights of immigrants and advancing child welfare, especially the regulation of child labor. Her elder sister, Edith Abbott, who was a social worker, educator and researcher, had professional interests that often complemented those of Grace's.
Go to ProfileHarleigh Trecker
1911 - 1986 (75 years)
Harleigh Bradley Trecker was an American social work academic and administrator who served as the dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Connecticut from 1951 to 1968. UConn's campus library in Hartford was named in his honor until it closed in 2017.
Go to ProfileMargaret Humphreys
1944 - Present (78 years)
Margaret Humphreys, is a British social worker and author from Nottingham, England. She worked for Nottinghamshire County Council operating around Radford, Nottingham and Hyson Green in child protection and adoption services. In 1986 she received a letter from a woman in Australia who, believing she was an orphan, was looking to locate her birth certificate so she could get married.
Go to ProfileMichael G. Vaughn is a professor of social work at the School of Social Work in the Saint Louis University School of Public Health, where he is also the current director of the Ph.D. in social work program.
Go to ProfileBrian Hines
1948 - Present (74 years)
Brian Hines is an American writer and land use activist who fights development of farm and forest land in Oregon. In 1971, Hines became a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a spiritual organization Radha Soami Satsang Beas. He later became critical of the organization, and after spending some time in Dharamsala now he practices Vipassana meditation.
Go to ProfileLady Amanda Ellingworth
1957 - Present (65 years)
Lady Amanda Patricia Victoria Ellingworth , styled The Honourable Amanda Knatchbull between 1957 and 1979, is a British social worker. Her earlier career was in UK social work, specialising in children's services and child protection. She has since held a portfolio of chair roles or directorships, working with vulnerable people, especially children. Among other organisations she is currently a director of Plan International, Barnardo's, and Great Ormond Street Hospital. Her previous roles include: Chair of The Caldecott Foundation, chair of The Guinness Partnership, founding chair of Guinness...
Go to ProfileUryu Iwako
1829 - 1897 (68 years)
Uryū Iwako, also known as Uryū Iwa, was a noted Japanese social worker during the Meiji period. She established a midwifery research institute and relief facility to care for orphans and the poor, and promoted social work and girls' education.
Go to ProfileMordechai Rotenberg
1932 - Present (90 years)
Mordechai Rotenberg is an Israeli professor of social work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Biography Mordechai Rotenberg was born in Breslau, Germany . His father was from Warsaw, descended from Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Alter, the founder of the Gur Hasidic sect. His father owned a publishing house in Breslau. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, the family immigrated to Palestine. Rotenberg's father opened a small printing press in Jerusalem. Rotenberg grew up in a Haredi household, with three brothers and a sister.
Go to ProfileAubrey de Grey
1963 - Present (59 years)
Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey is an English author and biomedical gerontologist. He is the author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging and co-author of Ending Aging . He is known for his view that medical technology may enable human beings alive today not to die from age-related causes. As an amateur mathematician, he has contributed to the study of the Hadwiger–Nelson problem in geometric graph theory, making the first progress on the problem in over 60 years.
Go to ProfileWinona Cargile Alexander
1893 - 1984 (91 years)
Winona Cargile Alexander was a founder of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, Incorporated at Howard University on January 13, 1913. It was the second sorority founded for and by African-American women and was influential in women's building civic institutions and charities. In 1915, she was the first black admitted to the New York School of Philanthropy , where she received a graduate fellowship for her studies. She was the first African-American hired as a social worker in New York.
Go to ProfileKee MacFarlane
1947 - Present (75 years)
Kathleen 'Kee' MacFarlane is an American social worker known for involvement in the high-profile McMartin preschool trial in the 1980s. She was the Director of Children's Institute International. She developed the concept of the anatomically correct doll for children to use during interviews concerning abuse and played a significant role in the McMartin trial. MacFarlane has been criticized for her methods of interrogating small children. Charges against the defendants eventually were dropped.
Go to ProfileAbdul Sattar Edhi
1928 - 2016 (88 years)
Abdul Sattar Edhi was a Pakistani humanitarian, philanthropist and ascetic who founded the Edhi Foundation, which runs the world's largest volunteer ambulance network, along with various homeless shelters, animal shelters, rehabilitation centres, and orphanages across Pakistan. Following his death, his son Faisal Edhi took over as head of the Edhi Foundation.
Go to ProfileFelix Biestek
1912 - 1994 (82 years)
Rev. Felix Biestek was an American priest and professor who made significant contributions to the field of social work during its period of expansion following World War II. Biestek was born in Cicero, Illinois and graduated from Loyola University of Chicago in 1938. He was ordained in 1945. He earned a master's degree in sociology at St. Louis University and a master's degree and doctorate in social work at Catholic University of America in Washington D. C.
Go to ProfileDaphne Phelps
1911 - 2005 (94 years)
Daphne Phelps was a British writer who spent most of her life in Taormina, Sicily. Life Phelps attended St Felix School, Southwold, Suffolk, and trained in psychiatric social work at St Anne's College, Oxford, and at the London School of Economics.
Go to ProfileBrian Gallagher is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of United Way Worldwide. Early life and education Gallagher was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was raised in Hobart, Indiana, where he was one of six children. His father was a plumber and his mother was a homemaker who reupholstered chairs for extra income.
Go to ProfileMaria Yellow Horse Brave Heart
1953 - Present (69 years)
Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart is a Native American social worker, associate professor and mental health expert. She is best known for developing a model of historical trauma for the Lakota people, which would eventually be expanded to encompass indigenous populations the world over. She is Hunkpapa/Oglala Lakota.
Go to ProfileFazle Hasan Abed
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
Sir Fazle Hasan Abed was the founder of BRAC, one of the world's largest non-governmental organizations. Sir Fazle was honored with numerous national and international awards for his contributions in social development, including the LEGO Prize , Laudato Si' Award , Thomas Francis, Jr Medal in Global Public Health , World Food Prize , Spanish Order of Civil Merit , Leo Tolstoy International Gold Medal , WISE Prize for Education among others.
Go to ProfileMary Stewart
1863 - 1925 (62 years)
Mary Stewart was the first hospital almoner appointed in the United Kingdom. Little is known of Stewart's family or early life. She was educated at the North London Collegiate School for Girls and trained as a social worker with the Charity Organisation Society .
Go to ProfileW. E. B. Du Bois
1868 - 1963 (95 years)
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community, and after completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909.
Go to ProfileMiriam Feirberg
1951 - Present (71 years)
Miriam Feirberg Ikar is an Israeli politician currently serving as the mayor of Netanya, a city in the Central District of Israel. Feirberg is the first female mayor in Netanya and one of the few women who have served as mayors of Israeli cities.
Go to ProfileLawrence Shulman
1937 - Present (85 years)
Lawrence Shulman is the former Dean of the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. His scholarship covers these subfields of social work: group work, supervision, child welfare, and teaching. Among his books are:The Skills of Helping: Individuals, Families, Groups and Communities,Interactional Supervision; and Mutual Aid Groups Vulnerable and Resilient Populations, andThe Life Cycle.
Go to ProfilePushpa Basnet
1984 - Present (38 years)
Pushpa Basnet is a social worker and the founder/president of Early Childhood Development Center and Butterfly Home, non-profit organizations, in Kathmandu, Nepal. Her organization works to strengthen the rights of children living behind bars with their incarcerated parents.
Go to ProfileAlexis Jay
1949 - Present (73 years)
Alexandrina Henderson Farmer Jay, OBE is a British academic. She is visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde and the independent chair of the Centre for Excellence for Children's Care and Protection .
Go to ProfileJayaprakash Narayan
1902 - 1979 (77 years)
Jayaprakash Narayan , popularly referred to as JP or Lok Nayak , was an Indian independence activist, theorist, socialist and political leader. He is remembered for leading the mid-1970s opposition against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, for whose overthrow he had called for a "total revolution". His biography, Jayaprakash, was written by his nationalist friend and the writer of Hindi literature, Rambriksh Benipuri. In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in recognition of his social service. Other awards include the Magsaysay award for Public Serv...
Go to ProfileErez Biton
1942 - Present (80 years)
Erez Biton is an Algerian-born Israeli poet of Moroccan descent. He is the 2015 recipient of the Israel Prize for Hebrew Literature and Poetry, among other literary awards. Biography Erez Biton was born in Oran in a Moroccan Jewish family. His family fled Algeria in 1948, and made aliyah to Israel. He grew up in Lod. At the age of 10, he lost his vision and his left hand to a stray hand grenade that he had found. The following year he went to school at Jerusalem's Institute for the Blind. He earned a B.A. in social work from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an M.A. in psychology at Bar-Ilan University.
Go to ProfileStuart A. Kirk
1945 - Present (77 years)
Stuart A. Kirk holds the Marjorie Crump Chair in Social Welfare at UCLA and is a former psychiatric social worker. His research interests include mental health issues, particularly the creation and use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . Kirk has authored, co-authored and edited many books, including most recently Mad Science: Psychiatric Coercion, Diagnosis, and Drugs . He was former chief editor of the Social Work Research journal.
Go to ProfileAnne Cummins
1869 - 1936 (67 years)
Anne Emily Cummins was an early British medical social worker who was later called the "mother of almoners". Life Cummins was born in Reigate in 1869. She was educated at Kensington high school and first went to work as a governess. She briefly worked as a teacher before deciding that social work should be her career. She had a natural ability to understand and assist. She was taken on by the Charity Organization Society who sent her to train under Edith Mudd who was an early almoner. She trained and then worked at St. Thomas's Hospital in London. Cummins is credited with inventing the role of a modern social worker attached to a hospital.
Go to ProfileJessie Taft
1882 - 1960 (78 years)
J. Jessie Taft was an early American authority on child placement and therapeutic adoption. Educated at the University of Chicago, she spent the bulk of her professional life at the University of Pennsylvania, where she and Virginia Robinson were the co-founders and innovators of the functional approach to social work. Taft is the author of The Dynamics of Therapy in a Controlled Relationship . She is also remembered for her work as the translator and biographer of Otto Rank, an outcast disciple of Sigmund Freud; in addition, development of the functional approach to social work was greatly inspired by her work with Rank.
Go to ProfileSindhutai Sapkal
1948 - 2022 (74 years)
Sindhutai Sapkal was an Indian social worker and social activist known particularly for her work in raising orphaned children in India. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2021 in Social Work category.
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