Yesterday I got to catch up with my mentor, friend and former supervisor, Dr. Laura Nissen, the dean of the Portland State University School of Social Work. When I was at a uncertain professional crossroads after leaving Apple in 2013, Laura hired me to be the School of Social Work’s very first marketing and communications manager. How would this twenty year veteran of corporate America adapt to a vastly different university environment concerned more with equity, access, social justice and shared governance? I will be forever grateful to Laura for the risk she took in hiring me. Laura will be stepping down as dean this spring and take a sabbatical in 2019-20. I can’t wait to see what emerges in her next exciting chapter! Thank you, Laura, for believing in me and connecting me so deeply to the field of social work and Portland State University’s higher education access mission.

#mentor #portlandstate #socialwork #kurt2pt0 #kurt3pt5