Alumni Spotlight

Anthony Grady, MSW ‘06

While earning a bachelor’s degree from Illinois Benedictine College (now known as Benedictine College) Anthony considered law school until an internship with the Safer Foundation motivated him to enter the field of social service.
 
After his college graduation, he took on a case manager position with ABJ Community Services, which works with families that were involved with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). For five years he spent his time trying to help families empower themselves and to help parents regain custody of their children.

In 1999, Anthony was briefly employed at Jacobs social service agency before starting his career at the DCFS office of legal services working as a screener for adoption and guardianship. Anthony spent eight years in the legal department in various capacities ranging from working with attorneys in the courtroom to working as the liaison between DCFS and the States Attorney’s office to terminate parental rights.  Knowing that he wanted to do more in the social work field, he was convinced by one of his best friends to attend Dominican University’s MSW program.

During his time at Dominican he developed a better understanding of himself and the role of social workers in regards to helping people. Anthony learned that social work is not about assisting people who are living in poverty, on drugs, homeless, or overwhelmed with a large number of children. As a social worker, his goal is to teach and assist people how to empower themselves. A year after his 2006 graduation, he accepted a position with DCFS Division of Monitoring, where he has been for the last two years. His duties allow him to work with agencies that are contracted by DCFS to provide social services to families. The private sector of social service is where he started, so it was an honor to work with the very same people that gave him his opportunity.

Currently Anthony is a second year doctoral student at Olivet Nazarene University. His dissertation focus is on the study of African American adolescent behavior and parenting as it relates to criminal behaviors. Along with being a doctoral student for the last two semesters, he has been an adjunct faculty member at Dominican’s Graduate School of Social Work, teaching Human Behaviors in Social Environments II.  After graduation Anthony would like to continue teaching on either the elementary, secondary or postsecondary level. Truly committed to social service, the thoughts of attending law school are far behind him. His hope is to be a pioneer in the evolvement of social work as it relates to the way we service families and the way we engage our children within the academic arena.

Anthony is married with two daughters Autumn 14 and Ariel 11.