Yolanda C. Padilla
Dr. Yolanda C. Padilla is the Clara Pope Willoughby Centennial Professor in Child Welfare at The University of Texas at Austin Steve Hicks School of Social Work and the inaugural Director of the Center for Diversity and Social & Economic Justice, a center of the Council on Social Work Education, where she is responsible for the development of innovative curriculum on diversity and social justice for over 750 accredited social work programs across the United States. She is currently lead editor for an upcoming special issue on “Advances in Social Work Practice with Multicultural Communities” in the Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Social Work. Her recent research has included studies on the ties of immigrants to countries of origin through remittances, economic insecurity and access to the social safety net among immigrant farmworker families, and emerging health disparities among new generations of U.S. children. She is a network scholar with the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a national study of children and families in the post-welfare reform era. Dr. Padilla is a fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and in 2015-2016, she served as Vice President and Conference Chair of the Society for Social Work and Research. She holds a joint doctoral degree in social work and sociology from the University of Michigan, where she specialized in the study of inequality and poverty.