• Director of Training and Research, SATRI
• Senior Director of Residential Services, Parsons, Residential Division
• Director, Community Residence, Parsons, Residential Division
• Program Coordinator, Parsons, Residential Division
• Social Worker, Parsons, Residential Division

Career Highlights

• With Northern Rivers for 23 years in positions of increasing responsibility, Jillian says, “I love the work the organization does.”
• Opportunities exist for people to advance; Northern Rivers recognizes, encourages, and develops staffers' professional skill. Jillian has developed training and leadership skills in residential roles as well as now at SATRI.
• SATRI helps staff be good at what they do through their extensive training offerings; trainings also support child and family social services workers across the state.

Jillian G., director of training and research at the Sidney Albert Training and Research Institute (SATRI), part of the Northern Rivers family, leads the work on training offered to staff and participants across New York state. With Northern Rivers for 23 years in positions of increasing responsibility, and choosing to stay even though recruited more than once by other groups, she emphasizes, “I love the work that the organization does.” She adds that the organization helps staff grow in their skills and capabilities: “opportunities are there for people to advance at Northern Rivers.”  

“I love the work that the organization does. Opportunities are there for people to advance at Northern Rivers.”

She has been encouraged to apply for roles developing her leadership responsibilities, including her current position, roles that have long included a training component. “I've been blessed with great supervisors,” she says.

Soon after earning her master’s in social work (she also holds a bachelor’s in social work) Jillian joined Northern Rivers at the Parsons Child & Family Center as a residential social worker. Following that position and a brief time as a program coordinator, which included oversight of a community residence for adolescents and a crisis community residence for children ages 5 to 12, she became director of community residence. That director role added responsibility for implementing training—an ongoing part of her professional work—and programmatic needs for all of Parsons. She then became Parsons’ senior director of residential services before moving into her current position. She has had the opportunity to work in a clinical role as well as program-specific administration, which has given her knowledge to help do the work she now does. 

Her most recent move has combined her training skills with her increasing leadership expertise. Jillian notes that she has been encouraged to grow in her years at Northern Rivers; the organization pays attention to the abilities of its employees and encourages their use, she adds.

With her move to SATRI in 2015, Jillian took on responsibility for training for Northern Rivers as a whole, including management and development of the sessions, which cover a wide variety of topics critical to children and families. She also oversees contracts to provide training to the NYS Office of Mental Health (OMH) and NYS Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) as well as the State University of New York Professional Development Program.

“My passion is here, doing the work that I love,” Jillian says. That work includes leading her “great team” of 10 as well as teaching training sessions, usually two or three times a week, social services professionals, community members, children, and families. Through SATRI and her oversight, about 100 trainings are offered—both in-person and virtually—to Northern Rivers staff and to child and family social services workers across the state. One recent month, for example, included 67 sessions for 920 people who earned 226 continuing education units.

Jillian notes that organizationwide communications help keep her and her team in touch with happenings and changes that in turn might impact SATRI and its training sessions. Through the process, she says, “you have autonomy to do your work; you’re trusted to get that work done.” That has led, in one initiative, to address identified staff challenges to turn them into competencies with new training. She also emphasizes the importance of SATRI training sessions that support new employees in their particular programs. However, SATRI doesn’t stop there. A current initiative is supervisory training for people who want to move into those roles. In all SATRI training, Jillian says, “we support employees to help them be good at what they do.”