2026 Joan MacKenzie Davies Lecture
From Turmoil to Transformation: How Everyday Social Work Competencies Benefit Clients and Communities in Challenging Times
1:00 to 2:30 p.m. ET
Dr. Carolyn Mak, Assistant Professor (Teaching Stream) at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto
Social workers are everyday heroes - we attend to clients and communities with compassion, empathy, advocacy, and values that empower in a variety of settings. This lecture will ground us in our professional roots, as we weather the storms of local and global contemporary challenges. Attendees will consider how our everyday actions can ripple into large and positive impacts for both clients and social workers when we apply anti-oppressive, decolonial and trauma-informed approaches.
Dr. Carolyn Mak (she/her) is an Assistant Professor (Teaching Stream) at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto. She has been a practicing social worker in the Toronto community for almost 25 years. Much of her career has included working with children, youth and their caregivers in schools.
Carolyn’s career began in family service and children’s mental health organizations, and then she worked for a number of years at the Toronto District School Board as a social worker. After time in the public school board, she joined Kids Help Phone (Jeunesse J’ecoute), a national non-profit charity offering anonymous counselling to young people, as the Director of Knowledge Mobilization and Program Development, guiding the team that offered support to the online and phone counsellors. Between 2015 and 2024, Carolyn returned to school social work practice and worked at Branksome Hall, an independent girls school in central Toronto where she spent several year serving the Junior School and then transitioned to being Director of Well-Being and School Counselling. In 2023, Carolyn was honoured as the recipient of the Ontario Association of Social Workers’ (OASW) School Social Work Achievement Award.
Currently, she teaches Masters of Social Work students including the foundational theory and practice courses, and cognitive behavioural therapy and school social work courses. Carolyn is passionate about finding new and innovative ways to teach and engage the next generation of social workers. She was the 2024 recipient of the International Coalition of Girls Schools (ICGS) H. William Christ Educator Prize for her work collaborating with international cohorts of elementary and secondary educators on action research projects. Her research interests include teaching and learning about social justice in clinical social work, how social workers can combat anti-Black racism, and the practice of civil discourse skills.