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MSW Student Profile: Justin Woods
– Justin Woods, MSW/MBA ’21
JUSTIN WOODS: PURSUING DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION WORK THROUGH SOCIAL VENTURES
Justin Woods, MSW/MBA ’21 communities,” he says. He began in Los Scholarships are crucial to Wood’s grew up in Colorado Springs, “a Angeles, working in direct services at the journey, including the Dean’s Mission conservative, white military town,” Black AIDS Institute and then returned Scholarship. He is also part of the home to Fort Carson and the U.S. Air to DC, to Whitman-Walker Health. Michigan Scholars Program and the Force Academy. His family lived in the Whitman-Walker specializes in care Global Scholars Program. “I wouldn’t be city’s underfunded Harrison School for the LGBTQ+ and HIV communities. here without that funding,” he says. “It District 2. Justin was an honors student, “I was exploring inequality, racism liberates me to do work I am passionate which he found complicated. “I didn’t and my own Black identity,” he says. about—and without debt, I have more see people like me in AP classes,” he “African Americans need mental health freedom and I use that privilege to do says, “so I struggled to understand my resources the most, but they have the work in communities of color.” identity.” least access. What could I do?” He was moving toward graduate study, but in His dream is to pursue diversity, equity Woods then studied political science what field? “I was passionate about and inclusion (DEI) work through at George Washington University in social work,” he says, “but I had to think financially sustainable social ventures. Washington, DC and did a postgrad about what made sense in the long “Financial sustainability helps a stint in the Peace Corps in Rwanda. term.” nonprofit stay true to its mission,” he “Rwandans don’t think about what says. He describes his own mission it means to be Black,” he says, “but He knew U-M offered the top MSW as “helping communities of color as an outsider, I began to think more program in the country. A friend also develop the emotional skills necessary about how racial identity is presented. told him about the Consortium for to navigate racism and helping white I am also queer, so I wanted to work Graduate Study in Management, an communities deal with emotions that with LGBT folks in Rwanda. The only alliance of business schools that offered come up around DEI.” opportunity was HIV work.” scholarships to MBA students. U-M’s Ross School of Business was a member. Back in the U.S., Woods saw that Black He applied to the social work and America was also impacted by HIV. business programs and was accepted “There was work for me here in Black to both.
