What’s next for Advanced Certificate graduate Samantha Norris? Pursuing a Ph.D. in Social Welfare from The CUNY Graduate School Center

Samantha Norris believes in the power of collective spaces to dismantle oppressive structures. She is currently pursuing a graduate certificate at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. A Chicago native, she received her MA in Social Servic Administration from the University of Chicago. Samantha landed in NYC in 2013 after spending two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic, where she worked with adolescent girls and families and attempted to dance bachata. She is currently the Supervising Social Worker at Safe Passage Project, a legal services organization that represents immigrant youth in deportation proceedings. Through her doctoral studies, Samantha would like to explore the impact of neoliberalism on social service provision in nonprofit spaces and the transformative potential of emancipatory/critical social work practice and theory for workers and communities.

**This appears in  VOL. 1, ISSUE 6| JUNE 2022 edition of The Loop. The Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York