麻豆传媒

By Matthew Biddle

As a PhD candidate in the 麻豆传媒o School of Social Work, Ogechi Kalu is studying how intimate partner violence affects children in her native Nigeria, with the goal of developing effective interventions and policy solutions.

Kalu’s work received a major boost this spring, as the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) awarded her a 2025-2026 CSWE Doctoral Student Policy Fellowship. CSWE is the sole accrediting agency for social work education in the United States.

The competitive fellowship aims to develop a cohort of doctoral-level social workers who influence social policy in the federal legislative process. Through policy placement experiences and webinars on such topics as leadership and policy analysis, fellows will learn from experts and one another and develop policy briefs based on their research.

Fellows receive a stipend and travel support to CSWE’s annual conference and a forum for fellows in Washington, D.C.

“My personal experiences ignited my passion for policy and advocacy,” says Kalu. “With this opportunity, I’ll learn how to translate my research into policy and actionable steps. For me, this also reflects my desire not to gatekeep academic research but to ensure that my research is transformed into something that is impactful in the community.”

Kalu began her career as a radio journalist and created a nongovernmental organization (NGO), called Teens Think Africa Initiative, in 2017 to support and empower women and girls in Nigeria. When girls began coming to Kalu for trauma counseling, she decided to pursue clinical social work, earning her MSW from CMR University in Bangalore, India, in 2020.

Afterward, Kalu returned to Nigeria to run her NGO and a psychotherapy practice, before enrolling in the UB School of Social Work’s in 2022.

“The [Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care] originally drew me to UB — but I ultimately accepted the program because of my advisor, Dr. Mickey Sperlich,” Kalu says. “She is not just doing the research but making it practical by creating interventions and testing them to prove their efficacy. I saw her work and how it aligned with my future goals, and that’s why I chose UB.”

At the School of Social Work, Kalu serves as project coordinator on that Sperlich is leading to advance the Survivor Moms’ Companion, an evidence-informed intervention that Sperlich co-created for new and pregnant mothers with a history of trauma, sexual abuse or violence.

In addition, Kalu recently came on board as a project coordinator on another study — led by Patricia Logan-Greene, associate professor and associate dean for academic affairs — which aims to help social workers recognize and respond to the risk of firearm violence with their clients.

“The Survivor Moms’ Companion has been an enriching experience to see how a project develops over time and how a researcher can partner with grassroots organizations,” Kalu says. “It’s helped a lot in my research because I took cues from some things that Dr. Mickey did to secure a partnership with a federal agency in Nigeria for data recruitment for my dissertation.”

On top of the CSWE policy fellowship, Kalu earned two additional awards spring: a Margaret McNamara Education Grant and the Cenie “Jomo” Williams Tuition Scholarship from the National Association of Black Social Workers. Kalu also is a co-founder of , a platform creating awareness about intimate partner violence that aims to bridge the gap between research, practice and the community.

For her dissertation, Kalu is investigating how children in Nigeria process and cope with intimate partner violence — which, she notes, may be different than how kids in other countries deal with similar situations, limiting the effectiveness of existing interventions.

“Children are deeply affected by these experiences academically, psychologically, socially and long term, by becoming involved in crime later in life or even becoming a perpetrator themselves,” Kalu notes. “This study hasn’t been done in Nigeria. We need to understand that unique context to help inform interventions and policies and how nonprofits and social services interact with children in those systems.”

Matthew Biddle
Director of Communications and Marketing

Tel: 716-645-1226
mrbiddle@buffalo.edu