When Sammy Menjivar (MSSW ’26) came into the MSSW program, his experience in child protective services had already taught him that the constraints caseworkers face trace back to policy. That realization drove him toward the Administration and Policy Practice concentration, and ultimately, a full-time job in policy work.

In May 2025, Menjivar took “Social Work Leadership for the Public Good,” a course taught by Dr. Noel Landuyt that takes students to Washington, D.C. to build federal advocacy skills, work alongside policymakers and expand their professional networks. When he saw the course heading back right after his graduation this past May, he asked to join the cohort.

At one of the D.C. panels, Menjivar connected with a professional at Kennedy Krieger Institute, an organization that serves children, adolescents and adults with neurological and developmental needs. That professional offered a referral and connections to the Maryland Developmental Disabilities Council, where Menjivary now works as director of policy, where his focus is children and family policy.

Menjivar is quick to say that not every conversation in D.C. led somewhere. He talked to a lot of people during the course, and some of those connections didn’t pan out. It did, however, build his network and immediate D.C. community, where he now is connected to “people who will still be working in the field in 10 or 20 years from now” and he said he’s developing relationships for the long-term.

Throughout the program, he practiced conversations — with professors, classmates, practicum supervisors — so that by the time he was standing in front of policy professionals, the skill was already there. Two weeks in to his new job, he noticed he was often the first social worker in the room, but the program had prepared him for that.

The program, he said, taught him how “to be the social work voice in the room” and to “speak up a little bit more than I would probably otherwise.”

For students heading into the job market, his message is one of reassurance, where people who show up for each other. “ “We’re all kind of doing the same thing,” he said. “We’re really here to help. We can lean on each other. You’re going to find more good people than not.”