The second season of my podcast, From Sparks to Light, drops today. We’ll meet Gary Mallon, a fellow peregrino you may recognize from my summer journey along the Camino Primitivo in the north of Spain. As fellow east coasters, we bonded right away, and when I heard he was a social worker, I knew I had to have him on the podcast. I had so much fun talking to him about the work he’s done over the course of his career. He’s spent the better part of his life in the field of child welfare, working with kids in the foster care system. He’s warm, funny and really smart, and as we climbed through the Cantabrian mountains this summer, the conversations we had made the kilometers zoom by.
Like me, Gary began his career in residential treatment, caring for children who could no longer live with their families and, also like me, the journey that began from his Catholic roots ignited a spark that fed his desire to make a difference in the lives of the children he met throughout his career. When I talked with him he was in Louisiana, doing work with the state’s child welfare system. If you listen carefully, you might hear a train or two passing by.
Gary is the Julia Lathrop Professor of Child Welfare and the former Senior Associate Dean of Scholarship and Research at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College in New York City.
For more than 46 years, Gary has been a child welfare practitioner, advocate, educator, and researcher. He is an internationally recognized expert on LGBTQ+ children, youth, and family issues particularly as they relate to child welfare and juvenile justice. His scholarship and practice has been recognized through multiple awards.
Gary is the author or editor of more than thirty-one books, several of which have been translated into Spanish, Japanese, French, and Italian. He has lectured and consulted extensively throughout the United States, and internationally. He earned his doctorate in Social Welfare from the City University of New York at Hunter College, holds an MSW from Fordham University and has a BSW from Dominican College.
He has been a foster parent and is the adoptive parent of now grown children. He lives with his husband, Martin and Bruno, his dog in New York City and New Orleans.
You can listen to Gary’s episode here.