Dr. Amanda Baranski, DSW, LCSW
Dr. Amanda Baranski is a dedicated social work educator and the current President of the National Association of Social Workers, Colorado Chapter. Based in Denver, Colorado, she serves as a faculty member supporting MSW students and has extensive teaching experience across BSW, MSW, and DSW programs.
With a rich clinical background in hospital social work, mental health, recovery services, education, mediation, and consultation, Dr. Baranski brings a wealth of expertise to her work. She is skilled in supervising and delivering services to diverse populations within recovery-oriented care systems and excels at fostering collaborative relationships with clients, teams, and programs alike.
Dr. Baranski’s specialized areas of focus include artificial intelligence in social work, ambiguous grief and loss, queer issues, mental illness, and substance use disorders. A sought-after speaker and thought leader, she combines her clinical experience and innovative perspective to inspire and inform social work practice.
Land Acknowledgement
We honor and acknowledge our presence on the rightfully sovereign territory and the historic homelands of the Cheyenne, Ute, and Arapahoe Nations. This land was also home to important landmarks and experiences of other Native Nations including The Lakota, Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Shoshone, and others. NASW-CO respects the role of Indigenous peoples as the original stewards of the land, water, plants, and animals who call this place home. Today we take this moment to consider the rightful inhabitants of this land, and how we must work to uphold Indigenous peoples’ relationships with their traditional homelands. We must not ignore the brutal history of genocide and forced removal perpetrated against Indigenous communities by white colonizers. We celebrate the diverse Indigenous peoples that remain connected to this land we inhabit. We express our respect to them, to all Tribal Nations, and to the ancestors of this place. Today we commit to upholding equity and justice in all of our agency's actions and ensuring that our actions will work to repair the legacy of oppression of Indigenous communities.
Labor Acknowledgment
We acknowledge the reality that the United States was constructed by enslaved Black people, laboring under genocidal conditions. We must recognize that the majority of this nation's wealth was created by those enslaved Black men and women, who suffered the horror of transatlantic trafficking and chattel slavery, and their free descendants, who suffered violent oppression and dehumanization through segregation and Jim Crow laws. The dehumanization and often-fatal exploitation of Black men and women are forever linked to the American Story, and today we emphasize and acknowledge the cumulative oppression of Black men and women and the ongoing impact of the associated generational trauma that is still experienced by many today. We offer our support for those Black men and women today who are living under ongoing oppression, and we acknowledge the horrors and deaths that were caused by colonialism and white supremacy across this nation. Today we commit to upholding equity and justice in all of our agency's actions and ensuring that our actions will work to repair the legacy of oppression of Black men and women.