What initially stopped Pam from pursuing a graduate degree weren’t her responsibilities as a mother of two teenagers or her demanding, full-time job. Pam hadn’t worried about the time or energy academic study required. Her strong work ethic was enough to surmount those challenges. What she did lack, though, was confidence in her abilities. 

“One of my longtime regrets was not having my master’s, but I just didn’t think I was smart enough,” said Pam. 

Touro Graduate School of Social Work proved her wrong. A straight-A grad school student, Pam thrived in Touro’s rigorous academic yet supportive environment. 

“It took me two years to graduate, because I ended up going to school just on weeknights,” she said. “But, nothing would deter me once I was admitted. I love Touro College very much and its diversity. We were from different backgrounds, races and religions, Latino, Orthodox Jewish, African-American, middle-age, and all supportive of one another. And the teachers were very supportive, something I deeply appreciated.” 

But what drove Pam to enroll in graduate school wasn’t a desire to challenge herself. Rather, she took the academic plunge because of a recently enacted New York State law that requires social workers to be licensed, which necessitates earning an MSW. “I had no choice,” said Pam. “I didn’t want to be out of a job at 50 years old.” 

Touro’s program not only secured Pam’s employment and advanced her career in social work, it also taught Pam valuable lessons that have helped her professionally and personally. 

As she tells it, the graduate school opened her eyes to the benefits of cognitive therapy, specifically in helping individuals, as well as herself, overcome the fear of failure. In fact, she credits cognitive therapy with giving her the wherewithal to confront and surmount her anxieties about passing the social work national licensing exam. 

“At the exam, I thought, ‘What’s the worst that can happen if I don’t do well? What if my friends didn’t do well, what would I say to them to be supportive?,’” she said. “I took a few breaths, and then I passed.” 

Since then, Pam has shared that fear-fighting strategy with patients at Rockland State Psychiatric Center, where she has represented a steadying and comforting presence for nearly a quarter century. She joined the center as a social work assistant, devoting much of her time to evaluating patients in its in-patient admissions unit. Her graduate degree paved the way for her entrance into management. 

Today, Pam’s wide-ranging responsibilities include serving as residential program manager of the transitional placement and acute crisis residents programs and, up until the program closed recently, she was program manager for the partial hospital program, which provided outpatient services to severely and persistently mentally ill adults. 

As part of her duties, she oversees the everyday care of 65 patients, supervises 40 staff members and manages patients’ schedules, including their doctor visits. She also runs group cognitive behavioral therapy sessions in which patients, many of them suffering from depression or schizophrenia, challenge each other’s “distorted thoughts” by providing a more positive outlook. 

“I share my own experience in taking the licensing exam, about how I thought I would fail and how I was able to help myself by restructuring the way I was thinking,” she said. “Now that I’m in management, I have the ability to really help other people,” 

In her management roles, Pam also provides crisis intervention, a responsibility that often requires more than a little detective work to get to the root of patients’ problems and, on occasion, to help locate family members. 

Last year, for example, Pam was among professionals working with a foreign-born patient who seemed very much alone in the world. But, after doing some digging into his past and learning that he had once owned a business, they were able to locate his very loving family, including a sibling who was more than relieved to learn of his whereabouts and visit him. 

“It’s very rewarding when you witness families coming together,” said Pam. “But most of my work is centered on helping patients make the transition from the hospital to an outpatient residence, such as Odyssey House or the Bridge.” 

Just as she has helped hundreds of residents at the psychiatric center turn their hopes for a better life into a reality, they have enriched her own life. 

“They do for me as much as I have done for them,” she said. “It’s very rewarding to help patients get better and to give them a quality of life.” 

Not long ago, she was gratified to run into a former patient, who had suffered from bipolar depression, and to learn that he was holding down a job in a store. 

“I was very touched to see that he was able to live a productive life outside a hospital setting,” she said. 

Among her other duties, Pam is a field instructor, supervising two Touro graduate social work students. In this role, Pam said she is guided by "generativity," a term introduced by the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson to denote a concern for guiding the next generation. 

“You have to be supportive of people - just as the professors were with us at Touro,” she said. “They had such belief in us that if I had let them down, I would’ve felt terrible, and now that I’m in management, I have the ability to encourage others in their professional lives. I tell younger people, ‘Don’t be like me. Get your MSW now and don’t give up.’” 

Pam, who received her undergraduate degree in social work from Ramapo College, grew up in a large Irish-Catholic family, the youngest of seven children. While the family’s finances were tight, it didn’t scrimp on investing its time and energy in improving the world beyond its doors. Her mother, she said, traveled to Washington, D.C. to fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, an effort that her father also supported. 

Meanwhile, her eldest sister’s decision to attend law school was based on a desire to “work with legal services and help the poor,” said Pam. “It’s in our DNA, and I’m glad because the world can be a very harsh place, and I want to make life better.” 

It’s a commitment that Pam shares with her husband, Samuel, who carves out time from his job - renting cell phone tower space - to spearhead a grassroots campaign to stop large scale commercial development in their hometown, Oradell, New Jersey. Pam joined the effort and spoke at town hall meetings. As a result, development has stalled for the time being. 

She and Sam serve as role models for their daughters, Jenna, who recently completed her bachelor’s degree at Ramapo, and Victoria, who entered Rutgers University’s freshman class in September. 

For Pam, social work is her response to the pain and sorrow she witnessed as a youngster. “I saw a lot of suffering, including two cousins, one 5 years old, the other 12 years old, who died in separate car accidents. I saw that life can take an ugly turn, but that people needn’t face these challenges alone. And I wanted to be one of those people whose outstretched hand can make a difference in their lives.” 

And from all perspectives, Pam most definitely does that, each and every day. 

From Vision & Values, Winter 2013