Monika L. Son, a tenured faculty member at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, has held various roles in the Percy Ellis Sutton SEEK Program since 2003, including faculty, counselor, and advisor. As the Counseling Coordinator since 2012, she manages counseling practices, collaborates on campus committees, and serves as a liaison to CUNY’s Office of Special Programs Council of Counselors. She also supervised graduate student interns at the Columbia School of Social Work from 2010 to 2012 and coordinated training for the CUNY Counseling Assistant Program.
With a background in education, counseling, and a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from CUNY, Dr. Son’s research explores the strategies of first and second-generation Dominican students in various life contexts. Her work on immigrants, identity, and education has been presented at conferences and contributed to academic publications. Dr. Son also integrates mindfulness into her counseling and supervision practices, offering presentations and workshops on “Using Mindfulness in the Workplace” to enhance awareness and efficiency.
Find out more about her work here.
Sai Sudha is a contemporary social worker from Chennai, India. She has five years of experience in the social sector and focuses on the education sector. She is currently a Project Manager and the Executive assistant at Nalandaway Foundation and oversees projects on wellbeing and mental health for children from disadvantaged communities. She leads teams on content development for state wide projects. She has designed and created projects on wellbeing and academic learning for primary schools and adolescents.
She holds a Certification in Design Thinking from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She has a keen interest towards Eastern psychology and completed her Post Graduate Diploma in Applied Buddhist Psychology. She has also completed a course on ‘Recovery from Trauma: Support and Skills.’
She has done a paper presentation on ‘Designing for children with focus on Play and Learn’ for the IDC School of Design, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
She is a passionate writer and a poet. She is an animal lover and a nature enthusiast.
Ananya studies socio-emotional skills at the intersection of different identities across cultures. Additionally, she examines sense of belonging in rural adolescent girls in India prone to early marriage. Her interests include conducting measurement analysis to modify tools employed, understanding conceptual psychological pathways, designing interventions as well as evaluating programs in terms of impact and process. She is also a trained evaluator along the lines of culturally responsive evaluation and has conducted evaluations in both India and the US.
Ananya is also the co-founder of SwaTaleem Foundation, that works with KGBV schools to enhance the educational outcomes through SE skills using human-centred design.
