Barbara DiGangi is a Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW) and social impact strategist passionate about the intersection of social justice and mental health. With over 17 years of experience, Barbara has worked to create programs that center youth and families, always focused on empowerment and advocating for fostering environments that help people thrive. Barbara earned her master's degree in social work from New York University, with a concentration in advanced social policy. Throughout her career and experience, she has held various roles - practitioner, advocate, leader, and organizer - all of which have given her a broad understanding of how systems can better serve, center and uplift communities. She has spoken locally and internationally on social justice and mental health, aiming to share knowledge and collaborate for meaningful change. In her spare time, Barbara has provided mentorship, advisory and coaching to women and girls.
Barbara’s activism has taken many forms. Her insights on feminism, mental health, and entrepreneurship have been published in outlets such as Teen Vogue, HuffPost, Bustle, and Thought Catalog. In 2017, Barbara was a volunteer marshal at the Women's March in D.C. She also led a petition for her high school to change their sexual assault policies. With over 700 signatures and garnered media attention, the school later enhanced their school policies.
Barbara has also submitted testimony to New York City Council advocating for accessible community-based mental health care and was a key advocate in New York State expanding Children and Family Treatment and Support Services (CFTSS) to include support groups for caregivers and collaterals (siblings, educators, etc) across the state.
In 2012, Barbara co-founded Project Bond, an organization focused on parent-child attachment and healthy relationships, in response to witnessing the unique needs of foster and adoptive families going unmet. In 2017, Barbara was the founding Director of Families Thriving at University Settlement Society of New York (USS), America’s first settlement house, through $1.33 million seed funding from the Manhattan District Attorney Office’s Criminal Justice Investment Initiative to address mass incarceration. Families Thriving partners with individuals, families, and community stakeholders to provide community care including multi-tiered mental health and wellness supports. Under Barbara’s leadership, more than 90% of graduating families report experiencing positive change after having been involved. As Director of Families Thriving at USS, Barbara’s work has entailed ground up program design and staffing, strategic planning, implementation, development of community partnerships, clinical oversight, and outcome measurement.
Barbara currently serves as the Director of Community Wellness Initiatives at University Settlement where she builds programming in response to community mental health needs. This work has included an initiative to embed mental health mental health and social emotional supports into 17 youth development sites across the Lower East Side and Brooklyn, providing Crisis Debriefing in response to community violence, and securing a partnership with NYC Community School District 1 and Trinity Church Wall Street to expand Families Thriving into all 19 District 1 schools. She’s also co-created and launched Connection Circles, a group processing model in response to Covid and social and racial injustice.
As community mental health needs have risen across New York City, Barbara has been grateful to the opportunity to collaborate with and provide thought partnership to institutions including the NYC Office of School Health, the New York State Coalition for Children’s Behavioral Health, and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. She was honored to be invited to join NYC Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom’s Child and Family Mental Health Taskforce, and Trinity Church Wall Street’s Neighborhood Council, a group of community stakeholders gathered to advise grantmaking and advocacy strategy for Lower Manhattan. In 2024, Barbara was proud to have been named an Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow, joining a diverse cadre of leaders who are well-connected and powerfully positioned to build the political will, change systems, and drive the policy agenda needed for the well-being and prosperity of all children and families.
Barbara is daring greatly in New York City where she thrives on creating, innovating and collaborating with others to dismantle any and all barriers keeping folks from accessing their own great power and potential.
