Hanna Mark is social worker, doctor of social welfare, and Santa Monica native. She received her BA from Boston University in 2008 and completed a combined MSW (specializing in Community Mental Health) and PhD degree in 2017 from the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, she held an appointment at the Mack Center for Social Conflict and Mental Health and a residency at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. She also was a lead instructor for the undergraduate course, Introduction to Social Welfare Policy, wherein she helped to implement a structurally-competent approach to social work education; Dr. Mark continues to teach social welfare policy as an adjunct instructor through Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Service.
Prior to joining the UCLA-DMH Public Mental Health Partnership, Dr. Mark served as Senior Consultant to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, where she advised on developing outcomes for the Governor’s and Mayor’s Challenge to Prevent Suicide. She also spent three years prior to her graduate degrees on the Military Sexual Trauma Support Team at VA Palo Alto’s National Center for PTSD. She has spent time working with and studying social welfare and social justice in Ireland, Israel, Indonesia, and Rwanda. She also has held consultancies with both the International Organization for Migration and the Joint IDP Profiling Service in Geneva, Switzerland, in which she co-authored reports meant to shape global approaches to the monitoring of and care for displaced persons.
Dr. Mark has been certified as a Domestic Violence and Rape Crisis Counselor in the state of California. She remains radically motivated by the pursuit of strong welfare states and equitable communities in which everyone has opportunity to not only survive, but thrive.
