Joan Levy Zlotnik, MSSW ’74, received the 2025 NASW Foundation’s Knee-Wittman Lifetime Achievement Award, “for her efforts in improving child welfare services and bringing awareness to the health and mental health needs of children and society’s most fragile communities. Zlotnik played a critical role in promoting the blueprint for training programs, supported through Title IV-E of the Social Security Act that strengthened child welfare curriculum and increased the number of social work students that pursue child welfare careers.”
Reflecting on her social work education at UW-Madison, Joan explained, “While I left Madison over 50 years ago, the School of Social Work’s Pincus-Minahan systems approach to social work and the concept of social worker as Change Agent has stayed with me throughout my career, from direct practice to policy, advocacy, and program development efforts focused on systems change.”
The award will be presented at the NASW Conference in Chicago on June 17.