Alumni
Each year, the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work honors alumni who have made significant contributions to their community. On Nov. 14, 2024, alumni, faculty, staff, and friends came together to celebrate the newest cohort of Alumni Awards recipients.
Congratulations again to our 2024 Alumni Award recipients!
Distinguished Alumni Award
Tracy M. Soska (BASW ’74, MSW ’78)
Clinical Associate Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work
Tracy M. Soska is clinical associate professor emeritus and retired Community, Organization, and Social Action specialization chair at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work, where he also was the continuing education director for 26 years. Soska helped to establish the satellite MSW programs at Pitt’s Johnstown and Bradford campuses. For more than a decade, he co-led the University’s Community Outreach Partnership Center, the forerunner of the University’s current Community Engagement Centers, and the University’s annual community engagement award now bears his name. He was an affiliated faculty member with the University Center for International Studies, notably its European Studies Center, through which he led two transatlantic forums on comparative community development, community work, and social policy.
Soska coauthored the book “University-Community Partnerships: Universities in Civic Engagement” and has written and presented nationally and internationally on community engagement in higher education, community organizing and development, citizen leadership, library social work, the community impact of gambling, settlement houses/community centers, and nonprofit/human services management and leadership. He has been active nationally with the Association for Community Organization and Social Action (ACOSA), having served as its national chair as well as editor of its Journal of Community Practice for many years. He also received ACOSA’s Career Achievement Award. He was a founder of the Continuing Education Directors Network in Schools of Social Work, and he was active in commissions and councils of the Council on Social Work Education, from which he received the Community Service Award.
Prior to joining the University, Soska was a nonprofit executive with the Human Services Center Mon Valley and the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Alliance as well as a program administrator with the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh. A graduate of Leadership Pittsburgh Inc.’s first class, Soska continued to lead its annual community/neighborhood session for more than 30 years. He most recently served on the Allegheny County Library Association board of directors and as its president, during which time he helped to establish a library social work fellowship in collaboration with Pitt Social Work. Soska also has served for many years on the board of the Pleasant Hills Public Library, including several as its president, and has published in social work journals on library/social work collaboration and libraries as community centers. He has long been active in the Pitt Social Work Alumni Council, among many other community volunteer activities.
Advancing Excellence Award
N’Dorah Z. Walker (MSW ’99)
Family Liaison Specialist , U.S. Department of Justice
Born in Sierra Leone and raised in the United States, N’Dorah Walker exemplifies social work excellence through her dedication to service and advocacy. Motivated by her faith and the motto “service above self,” she is an experienced leader in crisis and change management, addressing adversity, and dismantling systemic barriers. She has more than 25 years of experience in providing therapeutic support to children and families.
From 2001 to 2012, Walker served with the Arlington County, Virginia, Child and Family Services Division. She improved data collection, launched key initiatives, and increased child permanency rates by 130%. She helped to develop the nationally recognized Bridging the Gap Model for family support. Walker earned multiple honors, including Arlington County’s Outstanding Social Worker Award and Social Work Award
of Excellence.
In 2012, she joined the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where she developed a coordinated response to reduce veteran homelessness, earning a Special Project Performance Award. She later worked with the U.S. Department of Defense and cofounded an initiative that enhanced child safety. She has been with the U.S. Department of Justice since 2020, delivering crisis support to overseas employees. She continues to receive recognition
for exceptional service.
Walker is a licensed clinician and certified supervisor who mentors aspiring social workers. She also serves on the National Association of Social Workers Maryland Chapter Ethics Committee. She is deeply involved with Amie Academy Foundation, a nonprofit founded by her mother. The foundation built and supports Amie Academy in Sierra Leone, a secondary school providing free quality education to more than
400 children.
Rising Star Award
Rhonda Strozier (BASW ’17, MSW ’19)
Executive Director, Fineview and Perry Hilltop Citizens Council
Rhonda Strozier is a passionate community advocate who prides herself on supporting neighbors and curating opportunities for collective advocacy that promote change and improvement throughout the entire community. While Strozier has worked on the North Side of Pittsburgh for many years, she is a proud Hill District native. Growing up in an under-resourced community was a deciding factor in her decision to become a community leader.
She currently serves as executive director of Fineview and Perry Hilltop Citizens Council(s), an organization that represents the two neighboring communities of Fineview and Perry Hilltop. This spirit of collaboration in the shared vision has had a ripple effect in the community and allows the organization to serve both communities and the city at large. Strozier is known for her dedication to inclusion and belonging and her mission to ensuring that all neighbors have the resources and income they need to live comfortably and build wealth.
Strozier also is devoted to ensuring equity in existing housing and in housing development. She serves as a member of the Housing Justice Table and the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group’s Vacant Property Working Group. She believes that every person is entitled to the basic necessities, which include, at the very minimum, health care, housing, food, and internet.
Rising Star Award
Kess Ballentine (MSW ’17, PhD ’21)
Assistant Professor, Wayne State University School of Social Work
Kess Ballentine is an assistant professor at Wayne State University School of Social Work. She uses critical theory and mixed methods to uncover how organizational and local policy and practice affect individual and family outcomes. Her goal as a social work researcher is to have local impact while bridging siloed areas of the research to expose complex, cross-system interactions that maintain social injustices and harm family well-being while working through community-research partnerships to identify and implement innovative solutions. She currently works in Detroit, Michigan, where she is studying the impact of punitive workplace policies on worker well-being, how job quality affects parent-school relationships for low-paid workers, and how industry standards boards function as a mechanism to improve job quality. She also is the lead evaluator for a kinship and shared parenting intervention funded by the Children’s Bureau.
Ballentine’s research has been published in Health Affairs, the Journal of Family and Economic Issues, and New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy. Her service work includes serving as an editorial board member for Families in Society; a member of the Labor@Wayne advisory board; cochair of the Wayne State School of Social Work Committee on Antiracism, Diversity, and Social Justice; a member of the doctoral steering committee; and vice president of the Wayne Academic Union.
School of Social Work Service Award
Ann McCurdy (MSW ’08)
Behavioral Therapist, UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and Acting Director of Behavioral Health, Highland Detention at Shuman Center
Ann McCurdy is a licensed clinical social worker currently working as a behavioral health therapist at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh within the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine and acting behavioral health director at the newly re-formed Highland Detention at Shuman Center. She has more than 20 years of experience working with individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences, including court-involved youths. Her employment history includes case manager at the former Shuman Juvenile Detention Center; intake case worker for the Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth, and Families; and mental health and wellness counselor and adjunct professor at Penn State Greater Allegheny. She is skilled in providing individual and group therapy, behavioral health assessments, gender-affirming care, healing-centered approaches, end-of-life care, and crisis intervention and in working with adolescents, young adults, and families at risk.
McCurdy has been a trusted practicum advisor for many local colleges and universities since 2018. She served as a Ward Home board member for Auberle from 2018 to 2023. She holds a Bachelor of Social Work from Slippery Rock University in addition to her Pitt Social Work degree and has extensive knowledge of the resources and social service systems within the city of Pittsburgh.
Do you know a Pitt Social Work graduate who is making an impact on the field at a local, regional, national, or international level? Learn more about the award categories and make a nomination for the 2025 Alumni Awards.