Staff & Advisory Board
Mary K. Ross, MSW, LCSW
Mary K. Ross, is the Director of AHEC. She earned her Bachelor of Social Work degree from Creighton University and her Masters of Social Work degree from the University of Denver. She has provided clinical services in the psychiatric and medical social work field for over 25 years, choosing to serve medically indigent, under-served and marginalized populations throughout her social work career. She has worked in a variety of settings including primary care, inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care, shelter care and homeless medical access clinics, residential child care facilities, and private practice. Mary has held clinical field liaison supervision appointments with University of Denver and Colorado State University Graduate Schools of Social Work, the Denver Department of Health and Hospitals/Denver Health Medical Center, and the University of Colorado Hospital, Health Sciences Center and School of Medicine. Serving on and coordinating a range of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary treatment teams, Mary provided leadership and education for graduate students, medical students and residents, primary care physicians, nurses and nursing students, allied health professionals, patients, families and children.
Personal and community empowerment, self-responsibility, and ownership as means of breaking cycles of learned helplessness are central to her leadership approach. Mary seeks out community collaborations through strengths-based assessment and evaluation, encourages capacity building and collaboration opportunities among diverse community members, and implementation of the lessons learned for change and growth. She values “thinking outside of the box,” a willingness to listen to unpopular and hard-to-state needs, and moving cultural competency into cultural integration in everyday practice.
Active at the community level through grass roots organizing and fundraising, she has successfully established community education and support programs, client advisory boards, client rights advocacy groups and served on a wide range of community advisory boards for a diverse collection of organizations. Such organizations included the Colorado Governor’s AIDS Council, the Hospice of Metro Denver, the Mental Health Corporation of Denver, the State Division of Insurance, the Persons Living With AIDS (PWA) Coalition, the Fort Wayne Dance Collective, and AIDS Walk Steering Committee for the Northeast Indiana AIDS Task Force. She also volunteers regularly for a variety of events on the IPFW campus and in the Fort Wayne community.
A much sought after trainer and speaker, she has presented educational programming locally, regionally, and nationally. Mary is a regional trainer for the American Psychology Association HIV Office for Psychology Education (HOPE Program), providing training for mental health and health care professionals who provide direct services to persons living with HIV and AIDS.
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