California Society for Clinical Social Work Board

Current Board

1.     Leah Reider, CSCSW President, LCSW (Peninsula) 

RETURNING BOARD MEMBER

2.     Russana Rowles, LCSW, PPSC (Los Angeles)

RETURNING BOARD MEMBER (WILL SERVE UNTIL JUNE 2017)

3.     Golnaz Agahi, MPH, LCSW (Orange County)

RETURNING BOARD MEMBER (WILL SERVE UNTIL JUNE 2017)

Slated Board

4.     Monica Blauner, LCSW, PPSC (Location)

Monica Blauner, LCSW has over 30 years’ experience working in the treatment of mental health and addictions in a wide variety of settings. She was in full-time private practice in New York City, and has maintained a practice since moving to Los Angeles in 2004. Trained as a psychoanalyst, she has also used CBT, DBT, Mindfulness, and the Trauma Resiliency Model in her work.  In Los Angeles, she worked in the Department of Psychiatry at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and was Program Director of the Sexual Recovery Institute, which specialized in the treatment of sexual addiction.  She is also a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist.

Monica has always maintained her membership in Clinical Social Work Societies in both New York and California. She believes that it’s vital to support CSCSW because it is the professional organization that advocates for the best interests of clinical social workers.  She looks forward to working on membership, education and legislative issues.

5.     Leilani Buddenhagen, MSW, ASW (Sacramento)

As a board member for the CSCSW Leilani will seek to build avenues of advocacy for members which can strengthen the profession of clinical social work benefitting clinicians and clients alike. Areas Leilani would like to see strengthened include wages and workloads in agency settings, increased support for ASW's in the internship process, and greater representation of direct service clinicians in the evaluation and creation of mental health policy. 

Leilani is a clinical social worker with five years of experience providing clinical care to children, youth, and families in community-based settings.  She received her Master of Social Work from the University of Texas at Austin, School of Social Work.

She is currently registered as an Associate Social Worker in good standing with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.  Her skills include assessment, plan development, individual therapy, family therapy, case management, and crisis intervention. 

Leilani also has over ten years of experience in community development, health education, and program management.  She is interested in promoting social justice and applies the perspective of social justice and social contexts to clinical practice.Her diverse skills and years of experience as an advocate to communities with multiple barriers combine with her clinical expertise and enable her to offer uniquely comprehensive conceptualization and provision of therapeutic care.

6.     Nancy Delich, EdD, MATS, LCSW, PPSC (Fresno)

Dr. Delich received her Master’s degree in Social Work (MSW) from San Diego State University and a second Master’s degree in Transforming Spirituality (MATS) with a focus on Spiritual Direction from Seattle University. Her Doctoral degree in Educational Leadership (Ed.D.) from Seattle University has a double cognate in the areas of Social Justice and Spirituality.

Beginning her career as a social worker at a non-profit social service agency serving the Deaf and hard of hearing populations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Dr. Delich has since then worked in a variety of settings including community mental health, residential and public schools, and private practice in California and Washington as a licensed clinical social worker. She has taught graduate level pastoral counseling courses in the School of Theology and Ministry at both Saint Thomas University in Florida and Seattle University in Washington.  Currently, she is an assistant professor at CSU-Fresno in the Department of Social Work Education and teaches graduate courses in Advanced Individual Practice, Qualitative Research, and Psychosocial Assessment and Treatment Planning. 

I believe working towards increasing CSCSW's membership is vital to the well-being of the organization as CSCSW strives to regain the trust of the current and new members through restructuring (or whatever term you are using for rebuilding the organization). In addition, given my life work as a LCSW who has a profound hearing loss, I want to increase CSCSW members' awareness of the mental health needs of the Deaf and hard of hearing communities by shining a spotlight on the issues encountered by both children and adults with hearing loss and their families.

7.     Ellen Eichler, LCSW (San Diego)

RUNNING FOR SECOND TERM

Ellen Eichler,LCSW is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Social Work; she has been a social worker for over forty years. Ellen resides in San Diego and with her husband, a clinical psychologist, is co-director of the Relationship Counseling Center.

Ellen devotes half of her practice supervising ASWs and IMFTs who are acquiring hours for licensure. She was co-chair of the San Diego chapter of CSCSW for ten years and has been on the state board of CSCSW for a year and a half.

Encouraging membership in CSCSW is Ellen's primary area of interest. To this end, she visits schools of social work in the San Diego area acquainting them with the merits of joining CSCSW and invites MSWs and ASWs to local meetings.

Mentoring beginning social workers and networking among social workers is what Ellen enjoys. Their website is www.agrowingrelationship.com

8.     Geri Golmann, MSW, LCSW (Penninsula)

I received my license as clinical social worker in 1988 and am currently a Ph.D. candidate at The Sanville Institute in Berkeley, California. I have worked in inpatient and outpatient settings, in the public (state and county hospitals) and private sectors and am currently in private practice for over 20 years in Redwood City, California.  My current academic interests include: the impact of motherhood on therapist identity, effects of the culture of expertise on maternal self-esteem and curriculum development in graduate clinical social work education.

My overall goal regarding the Society is to assist in creating a solvent and viable state organization that promotes and protects clinical social work practice in the state of California. This would include, but is not limited to, recruitment of new members, especially focusing on new graduates and newly licensed practitioners, the provision of supportive professional services to our constituents, and strengthening relationships between academic institutions and the Society.

9.     Lisa Haas (San Fernando Valley)

As a CSCSW board member, I would want to work on increasing the society’s ability to recruit new members and retain existing members.  I have many ideas for how to do this based on 20+ years of business and marketing experience, education and success that I had prior to becoming a social worker. 

After graduating from Northwestern University in 1977, I began a career with companies that included IBM, Baxter-Travenol Laboratories, and Omron Electronics.  I received an MBA from Loyola University of Chicago in 1986 and worked for a variety of businesses and not-for-profit-organizations that included Sears, DePaul University, and Chicago Public Access Television Corporation.  After being responsible for the successful start-up and growth of several marketing departments and one counseling department, I began Haas Marketing and continued to do this work with small businesses and not-for-profits. 

I relocated with my family from Chicago to Maryland in 1999, attended the University of Maryland’s School of Social Work, and earned an MSW in Mental Health in 2005.  I completed internships with Kennedy Krieger Institute’s Social Work Outpatient Mental Health Clinic and a project sponsored by the Baltimore City Public Schools and Baltimore Mental Health systems.  I am a Licensed Graduate Social Worker in Maryland and several other states. I was a social worker for Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, one of the nation’s top ten private not-for-profit psychiatric treatment facilities, and a member of the Maryland Society of Clinical Social Workers and NASW.   

My family moved from Maryland to California in 2009.  I’ve been a member of CSCSW for a few years and participate in both the Greater LA and San Fernando Valley Chapters.  I am working on getting my LCSW and maintain a license to do social work in other states.   I have a husband and two sons who are both young adults. 

10.  Giselle Jones (San Fernando Valley)

Giselle Jones is currently a staff therapist at Didi Hirsch Taper Center in South LA serving primarily children, adolescents and families.  She recently achieved her master’s degree in Social Welfare at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and was the 2014 recipient of both the Jannette Alexander Award for clinical excellence from the CA Society of Clinical Social Work’s and UCLA’s Shapiro Merit Award.  Giselle received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from The University of Western Ontario, and an Associates degree from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts NYC.  Throughout her final year at UCLA Giselle practiced psychotherapy at her internship at Kaiser Permanente Department of Outpatient Psychiatry, implementing cross-model training to serve a diverse caseload of children and families, adolescents, couples, adults, and seniors and LGBTQI individuals.   She has also interned as school counselor at Youth Opportunities (YO) High School in South Los Angeles through LA Conservation Corps, enhancing student performance and well being with social service resources and therapeutic counseling.  While placed at YO High School, Giselle also reshaped the English curriculum and initiated partnerships with non-profit organizations to bolster the school’s artistic model.  For her graduate research requirement, she achieved first-class honors in her yearlong qualitative research in support of survivors of the juvenile justice system under Dr. Jorja Leap’s Good Lives Project.

Giselle is a 200-hour level certified Hatha Yoga Instructor with practice in leading asana and breath meditation, and is currently in process of being certified in Mindfulness facilitation at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC).

Giselle formerly served asDirector of Education for the non-profit youth literacy organization, Get Lit-Words Ignite, heading the nation’s first Classic Slam program, a progressive poetry curriculum and competition integrating 16 regions and over 2500 teens throughout the Los Angeles area.  In New York City, she was recruited by former Julliard professor, Denise Woods, to teach Express Yourself at the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, optimizing the communication skills of high-aptitude Harlem teens to gain admission to choice colleges.  Continuing as an adjunct faculty member at Los Angeles City College, Giselle also certified at-risk youth in workplace readiness.  

A veteran of stage and television, Giselle has transferred her acting skills to collaborate with psychologists and police sergeants in training NYPD recruits to sensitively manage people suffering from mental illness.  She also employed the use of powerful role-play to educate students at UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine in diverse patient interaction and care.

11.  Chet Villaba (San Francisco)

Chet Villalba has had a long, distinguished career in social work.  He was a founding member of CSCSW and served as president of the Board of Directors of the California Institute for Social Work, now known as the Sanville Institute.

Chet served as the Executive Director of Family Service Agency of Marin County and then was President and CEO of Family Service of the Mid-Peninsula in Palo Alto from 1973-1994.  He also maintained a private practice during that time period.  Chet was an interim executive director of Family Service Centers in Clearwater, Florida, and Josselyn Mental Health Center in Northfield, Illinois.  From 1985-2013 he was an organizational consultant to social services, mental health agencies, and museums.  His role included program planning and development, board training, fund development, and personnel issues.  He also was a consultant to agencies seeking accreditation, staff training, and supervision.

From 1982-2002, Chet was a clinical assistant professor and faculty field advisor at Smith College School for Social Work, where he received his MSW.  He was also part of the core faculty of the Institute for Clinical Social Work.  Chet served on numerous advisory boards of social service agencies, including the Mental Health Board of San Francisco and the Cleo Eulau Center, Palo Alto.  In July, 2014, he received the prestigious Day-Garrett Award from Smith College School for Social Work.

As a board member of CSCSW, Chet hopes to work on revising our by-laws.   His experience in serving on boards and as a consultant will be invaluable in rebuilding CSCSW.