Amplifying Latinx Voices: A Hispanic Heritage Month Symposium on Social Work and Community Advancement

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with Rutgers School of Social Work’s LISTA Certificate and Continuing Education Department at the "Amplifying Latinx Voices" symposium, proudly sponsored by the LISTA Certificate Program, a School initiative dedicated to training social workers in culturally congruent social work practice. The event features talks by Luisa Lopez, MSW on elevating Latinx social workers and Kurt C. Organista, PhD on Latino psychosocial and health solutions. This event is an opportunity to gain valuable insights while earning 1.5 Social & Cultural Competence CE hours. Don't miss this chance to amplify Latinx voices in social work and community advancement, supported by LISTA's commitment to cultural competence in social work practice.

Speaker bios:

Luisa Lopez, MSW, is a native of New York City and serves as President of the Latino Social Work Coalition and Scholarship Fund, and Director of Social Services and Communications at the Urban Outreach Center of NYC. A seasoned government relations professional, she has held roles at the Office of the Manhattan Borough President, the NYC Council, and served in the Washington, DC office of former Bronx Congressman José E. Serrano.

In her career, she has concentrated on addressing structural challenges by developing and implementing social interventions aimed at effecting positive change at all levels of government. Additionally, Luisa has become an advocate for the increased accessibility and availability of assisted reproductive technology, as well as destigmatizing infertility in communities of color. As President of the Latino Social Work Coalition and Scholarship Fund, she is a fierce advocate for increasing the number of culturally and linguistically competent social workers serving in New York City’s most vulnerable communities, as well as for elevating the importance and value that social workers bring to all areas of public life and civic engagement. In 2021 she became a published author in the Amazon #1 bestseller, Latinx in Social Work, writing an account of how her family building endeavors have impacted her social work journey thus far. 

Luisa holds B.A. in Political Science from the College of the Holy Cross. A social worker by training, Luisa earned her Master of Social Work from the New York University Silver School of Social Work. 

Kurt C. Organista, Ph.D., is Professor, School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley, where he studies Latino psychosocial and health problems. He teaches courses on psychopathology, racial and ethnic relations, and social work practice with Latino populations. He conducts research on HIV prevention with Latino migrant laborers, is editor of the book HIV Prevention with Latinos: Theory, research and practice, published in 2012 by Oxford University Press, and author of Solving Latino Psychosocial and Health Problems: Theory, Research, & Practice (2nd ed.), also published by Oxford University Press in 2023. He serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Community Psychology, the Hispanic Journal of the Behavioral Sciences, and the Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Social Work. From 2004-08 Organista was appointed to the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health, and from 2010 to 2015 he was Principal Investigator of a federal R01 grant from the NIAAA to develop and test a structural environmental model of alcohol-related HIV risk in Latino migrant day laborers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Organista served as trustee of the Latino Community Foundation (2015 to 2020), and as trustee and Vice Chair of the San Francisco Community Foundation (2008 to 2018). In 2018, he received the Leon Henkin Citation for Excellence in Mentoring Underrepresented Students, and in 2020 he was named the American Cultures Teacher of the Year. Also, in 2020, Organista was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, and in 2021 he was awarded the Harry and Riva Specht Endowed Chair in Publicly Supported Social Services.