4 minute read
Answering the Call
By Kira Goldenberg
A career-long journey advocating for progressive political causes
A degree in social work has uses far beyond clinical practice: learning how to listen to others without prejudice and to recognize when one’s own “stuff” is clouding an interaction are skills transferable to most personal or professional settings.
For Pam Wilmot, M.S.W. ’95, vice president of state operations at progressive advocacy organization Common Cause, her time at SSW helped her become an effective advocate and a leader for progressive political causes.
“I do use my training quite a bit,” said Wilmot, whose 20-plus-year career has focused on fighting for a fully inclusive representative democracy.
“Any human interactions are about your own internal process—understanding that and watching it, and understanding when you’re being triggered,” she said. “People have all sorts of feelings, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s who they are or where your relationship will be.”
It was very clear from the beginning that I wanted to be a social change agent, to work for policies that worked for all people.
Wilmot’s passion for progressive advocacy started early, even before completing her bachelor’s degree at Brown University. Within her first year on campus, she was working as a door-to-door fundraiser for a citizen action group and organizing a Public Interest Research Group (PIRG)—a chapter of the advocacy network started by Ralph Nader in 1970—at Brown.
She invited Nader to campus, where he was so impressed with her work that he hired her to spend the summer after her sophomore year building the team at the nascent Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board, the first of what became a national network of consumer protection advocacy groups. She was 20 years old and in charge of hiring and supervising 20 people.
“It was very clear from the beginning that I wanted to be a social change agent, to work for policies that worked for all people as opposed to just those that were well connected or insiders who were putting their thumb on the scale,” Wilmot said.
After undergrad and law school at Northeastern, Wilmot began her first stint at Common Cause as the Massachusetts branch’s executive director. Over the next four years, she worked to move the needle in the state on issues like campaign finance and ethics reform.
Then, grappling with the impacts of a chronic health issue while simultaneously serving as a main source of support for a friend with major depression, she decided to transition from macro to more direct service work. She matriculated at SSW in 1993. During her time in the program, she completed field placements in a locked psychiatric facility and an outpatient mental health clinic.
Post-graduation with two young children, she took a part time role in community mental health. But her old job at Common Cause soon beckoned anew.
“I missed the public policy, driving an agenda, making things happen, being more of the doer, and so when they asked me to come back, I did,” she said. This time, though, she took her Smith clinical education with her, training that she credits with making her a better advocate and a better leader.
“I missed the public policy, driving an agenda, making things happen, being more of the doer, and so when they asked me to come back, I did,” she said. This time, though, she took her Smith clinical education with her, training that she credits with making her a better advocate and a better leader.
“Social work gave me some really important skills,” Wilmot said.
“You have to really understand what the other person is bringing to the table and how to honor that and to communicate from a place of connection.”
Her clinical therapy experience also taught her to appreciate the powerful potential inherent in baby steps rather than seismic shifts.
“I think a lot of people get into the work and they want to see immediate results,” Wilmot said of advocacy, though her words also hold true for many rookie clinicians. “You have to be able to take your victories where they come, and to recognize that incremental change is real and significant, and can lead to much more fundamental change.”
