CWRU honors pair of Tri-C employees as part of Mandel School’s centennial celebration

October 11, 2016

Cuyahoga Community College employees Magda Gomez and Megan O’Bryan will be among 100 graduates of Case Western Reserve University’s Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences honored this coming Saturday for their contributions to the field of social work.

The Mandel School will present Gomez and O’Bryan with awards as part of the school’s centennial celebration. The pair will receive their awards at a luncheon Saturday at the DoubleTree by Hilton -- Tudor Arms Hotel on Carnegie Ave. near the CWRU campus.

Gomez is a 2004 graduate of the Mandel School with a master’s of science in social administration. She will be presented the Louis Stokes Community Service Leadership Award.

“I’m very honored to receive the award,” Gomez said. “I attended the Mandel School as part of the Louis Stokes Community and Social Development Program, which was a program championed by Congressman Stokes in the early 2000s. It’s specific to Hispanics and African Americans who want to pursue an MSSA degree. I was in the first cohort, and to date, there has been only about 20 graduates from that program.”

Gomez is the director of diversity and inclusion for Tri-C. She also serves on The Hispanic Roundtable, a community-based organization serving and empowering Northeast Ohio’s Hispanic population.

O’Bryan graduated from the Mandel School in 1995 with a master’s degree in management of nonprofit organizations. She has served as the vice president of development and the Tri-C Foundation since February. Previously, she has served as a member of the Tri-C board of trustees, the CEO of the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center (2000-2013) and the founding executive director of the Cleveland Transformation Alliance (2013-2016). She will be presented with a nonprofit leadership award.

“My education through the Mandel School really shaped my career,” O’Bryan said. “I still call upon and use the education I received on a daily basis in the work I do here at Tri-C. Had I not been a part of that program, I couldn’t have done the work that I’ve done at the Rape Crisis Center, the Cleveland Transformation Alliance and here at the College.”

The Mandel School has a full list of graduate honorees available on its website.