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Esther Ammon is a licensed clinical social worker and Director of the Pediatric Palliative Care and Family Guidance at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. Esther is a trainer with the Serious Illness Care Program (SICP) through the Stanford School of Medicine, the EPEC-Pediatrics program and is a faculty member with Stanford’s Palliative Medicine Fellowship program. She is a proud Board member of The Social work Hospice & palliative Care Network, as well as editorial Board member for the Journal of Social Work in Palliative and End of Life Care.

Mercedes Bern-Klug, University of Iowa, Professor of Social Work has been conducting research on improving care for older adults with advanced chronic illness for over two decades. Her work includes supporting surrogate decision-makers and enhancing social work services. She served as an Alzheimer support group leader for 12 years, provided Respecting Choices volunteer advance care planning services at the local senior center, and established and coordinates the National Nursing Home Social Work listserv.

Please Note: This write up is from the obituary of Joan, who recently passed away.

Joan’s professional career began in community mental health at Tufts New England Medical Center. She joined the faculty of the Smith College School for Social Work in 1980 where she cultivated her passions for mentoring students, writing, and finding creative teaching methods to apply psychodynamic theories to vulnerable and at-risk populations. She wrote four textbooks, including the co-edited Inside Out and Outside In: Psychodynamic Theories with Vulnerable and At- Risk Clients, often referred to by social work students as their “bible.” She likewise edited or co-edited Falling Through the Cracks: Psychodynamic Practice with Vulnerable Populations, Living with Dying, and Controversies in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorders.

While at Smith, Joan started the first national palliative care program for social workers, which she led for 15 years. She chaired the theory sequence in the Master’s Program and co-directed the Doctoral Program, nurturing generations of future practitioner scholars while collaborating closely: presenting, writing and teaching together. She was an inspiring and beloved teacher who also loved her work with adjunct faculty.

Smith provided many opportunities for her to teach across the world, including in Bulgaria, Hong Kong, Sweden, and Israel. Smith also freed Joan to attend four one-month fellowships in Italy where she completed several books and some of the 48 articles she published. She made lifelong friends during those fellowships with activists, poets, novelists, composers, translators, and performing artists.

Joan always maintained a clinical private practice, seeing patients from her home on Harrison Avenue and by Zoom from Pine Island Lake in Westhampton. She cared deeply for her clients and found true meaning in their personal progress.

After leaving Smith, Joan joined the faculty of the Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago where she taught, wrote and mentored doctoral students. Upon her retirement, she was appointed Professor Emerita. She was lauded for her compassion, commitment to vulnerable populations, generosity, and passion for teaching and learning. The ICSW recently established a scholarship in Joan’s name: The Dr. Joan Berzoff Social Service Scholarship. The scholarship supports students who demonstrate a strong commitment to clinical practice and work with vulnerable and underserved populations. ICSW announced, “Through this scholarship Dr. Berzoff’s legacy will continue to empower future clinicians dedicated to healing, advocacy, and compassionate care.”

coming soon

Dr. Grace Christ:

Dr. Grace Christ is Professor Emerita and Research Scientist at the Columbia University School of Social Work. Formerly, the director of social work at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, Grace is a founding and past president of the Association of Oncology Social Workers, and coeditor of the Handbook of Oncology Social Work (Oxford University Press). She is a cofounder and was board chair of the Social Work Hospice and Palliative Care Network (SWHPN) through early 2020, an organization that emerged from the Social Work Leadership Development Awards Program of the Soros Foundation’s Project on Death in America (PDIA), which Dr. Christ directed. Meeting the moment after the collapse of the Twin Towers, she developed the FDNY-CSU/Columbia University Family Program, which provided both intervention and research on the experiences of families of firefighters who died in the World Trade Center disaster on 9/11/01. Grace is a recipient of the National American Cancer Society’s Distinguished Service Award, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s Research Award, and PDIA’s Career Achievement Award. Among other publications, her book Healing Children’s Grief (Oxford University Press) was recognized by the International Association of Palliative Care leadership as one of twelve books providing critical new directions in the field of palliative care for the twenty-first century.

Maya Genovesi, LCSW, is the Associate Director of Social Work for Mount Sinai Hospital’s Emergency Department. She leads a 24/7 crisis response team, integrating palliative care values into emergency medicine. Maya focuses on proactive patient advocacy by ensuring that vulnerable patients’ goals of care, values, and personal histories are documented within the EMR to improve outcomes across the lifespan.

I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who has spent the majority of her career as a medical social worker in the fields of palliative care, hospice, and case management. I am currently a Psychotherapist for a Telehealth company.

Dr Stacy Orloff spent 34 years leading pediatric hospice and palliative care programs in Florida. Using her skills as a licensed clinical social worker, Stacy successfully advocated with policy makers and the legislature in the state of Florida to fund an innovative pediatric palliative care program that was later used as a model program throughout the country. Stacy has mentored other social workers to ensure equitable access to hospice and palliative care programs throughout the country. 

Mary Raymer LMSW, ACSW is an early hospice leader, advocate, educator, researcher and author. She established an award winning hospice at a time when hospice was not well known and ‘ suspect’. She has contributed to research that was minimal in the beginning days of hospice and helped to move the profession forward .She has held numerous leadership positions nationally including Social Work Chair for the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization as well as writing numerous articles and chapters including 3 for the Oxford PressText Book of Palliative Social Work as a co-author.She was the primary coinvestigator for the National Hospice Social Work Survey which was the first national study of it’s kind that provided empirical data on the benefits of social work on hospice teams at a time when programs were starting to minimize the use of social work.

June Simmons is the Founding President and CEO of Partners in Care Foundation and a nationally recognized innovator in person-centered, integrated care. She pioneered the Community Care Hub model, now advancing as a nationally adopted framework for connecting health and social care. As Co-Chair of the Partnership to Align Social Care, she helps drive national policy and systems change to strengthen community care infrastructure and promote scalable models that improve population health across sectors.

coming soon