From the Executive Director

Chris Mathias

By Janlee Wong, MSW

One of the great things about being in NASW is you truly have opportunities to meet and know great professional social workers. Chris Mathias is one of them. When I first started attending California Social Work Education Center (CALSWEC) meetings 20 years ago, I knew very little about CALSWEC and CALSWEC knew very little about itself as it was very new and still under development.

The founders and visionaries of CALSWEC were still debating what CALSWEC would be and what it would do. And as with anything in the county and academic world, there is constant turnover. Old leaders go and new leaders come. It was in these formative years that Chris came on the scene and I noticed her leadership skills right away. She was well organized, well-studied and knew how to be political, all essential for an organization like CALSWEC.

I was drawn to Chris because I knew she either knew the answers or could find the answers. Chris was and is very approachable and thought first before responding. Such an important approach given that half the time CALSWEC was making up the answers on the go. Soon Chris became the person who helped usher in CALSWEC’s new initiatives, branching out from Child Welfare to Mental Health and Aging.

CALSWEC leaders relied on Chris to help make the greatly expanded CALSWEC work with its many moving parts. They assigned her some pretty tough tasks including those that tried to bring uniform standards to a disparate and fiercely independent group of individual counties and schools. She made it through albeit with a few bruises along the way. Social workers can be an ornery lot.

Now that Chris is moving back to the valley (Fresno) and taking on a new challenge that brings her closer to counties and schools on a smaller scale, she will be doing what many social workers enjoy the most, making and shaking it at the local level.

I’ll miss Chris at the statewide policy level but I know we’ll continue to benefit from her work since social workers follow some tried and true principles including research informed practice and practice informed research. We certainly need it because when we think we figured out a problem, a new one emerges. As in the past, when that happens, I’ll pick up the phone and call Chris.

Best of luck, Chris, and be sure to answer your phone when I call.