Our nonpartisan guests Tanya Rhodes Smith (Director of the Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work and co-founder of the National Social Work Voter Mobilization Campaign “Voting is Social Work”) and Angela Bellas (macro social worker and PhD candidate at The University of Connecticut School of Social Work) shared about the importance and impact of voting.
Our guests:
Tanya Rhodes Smith, MSW is the Director of the Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work and Instructor in Residence at the UConn School of Social Work. She is also co-founder of the National Social Work Voter Mobilization Campaign (“Voting is Social Work”). As Director, she has overseen the expansion of the Institute’s Campaign School for Social Workers, which has trained 2,000+ social workers to run for office and lead in politics, and supports nonpartisan voter engagement as a social work intervention. Tanya’s is a proud political social worker and advocate. Her experience includes policy practice, legislative advocacy, community organizing and research. Her previous employers include the Bridgeport Child Advocacy Coalition, dHA Associates, Person to Person and the Center for Family Justice. She also served as a facilitator and coach for the Leadership Development Round table as well as a volunteer for numerous nonprofit boards and political campaigns.
Angela Bellas, MSW is a macro social worker and PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work. She currently works as a Graduate Assistant with the Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work. Angela has practiced in a variety of community-based settings as a community organizer, community health educator, volunteer training manager and project director over the last twenty+ years. Her dissertation research is focused on the movement for Black lives as a 21st Century Black liberation movement exploring themes of solidarity organizing, transformative justice models and collective liberation. Angela’s work with the Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work is focused on increasing civic engagement and voting power among the UConn Hartford community and through the Hartford Votes/Hartford Vota Coalition. Her work is grounded in concepts of electoral justice and inclusive democracy. Angela is also the mama of a first grader and an aspiring gardener engaged in mutual aid, police accountability, education equity and immigrant rights campaigns locally and statewide.
