An associate professor at — and alumna of — Hunter’s Lois V. and Samuel J. Silberman School of Social Work is being honored for her scholarship advocating for marginalized communities.
The Council on Social Work Education has selected Mayra López-Humphreys MSW ’01 CUNY PhD ’11 with its 2025 Community Impact Award, which recognizes community-engaged, justice-focused scholarship. The council will present the award on October 25 during its annual conference.
The honor illustrates Hunter’s commitment to fulfilling its role as an anchor institution, training ground for diverse talent, and engine of social mobility in New York City and in East Harlem, the site of the Silberman campus.
López-Humphreys uses a liberation ethic to teach restorative approaches for working with justice-involved individuals and their families. She serves as the principal investigator on an evaluation of the Peace Brokers initiative at Exodus Transitional Community, a peer-mentoring project designed and led by formerly incarcerated leaders to address public safety without police involvement.
López-Humphreys has also conducted research on the Exodus Transitional Hotel Project, a non-congregate emergency housing program that served individuals returning from incarceration during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her evaluation identified improved mental-health engagement, stronger family reconnections, and better employment outcomes among participants.
She also is the principal investigator for the Homeless Services Training Resource System, which is funded by the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance and housed at Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. In 2024, the system’s annual budget expanded from $500,000 to $1 million, positioning it as the state’s primary training initiative for staff working in homeless shelters.
Finally, she spearheads efforts to involve Silberman faculty and students with community groups in East Harlem. With the Humanities Action Lab, a national university-community coalition housed at Hunter, she has co-led “Building Bridges, Creating Futures: Community-Led Dialogue & Action.” The ongoing effort brings together groups to advocate for community needs.
Lopez-Humphreys integrates her community organizing work directly into her classroom pedagogy. Her Community Organizing class partnered with Exodus Transitional Community to co-facilitate narrative-based interviews with formerly incarcerated employees as part of a Humanities Action Lab initiative.
López-Humphreys came to Silberman in 2022 from The CUNY College of Staten Island, where she directed the bachelor’s of social work program and co-founded the Staten Island Equity & Belonging project, which won her the Distinguished CUNY Fellow Award for 2021–22. She has more than 25 years of nonprofit leadership experience in community development and program evaluation. Her work has appeared in Social Work, Journal of Social Service Research, Social Work Education, and Urban Social Work.
