天美传媒app

LaMone Downey-Leonard, the founder, CEO, and clinical director of , grounds her therapeutic approach in the principle of accompaniment, which emphasizes walking alongside others, sharing their burdens and hopes, and staying present as long as needed.

鈥淎ccompaniment is not about taking over someone鈥檚 journey,鈥� says Downey-Leonard, who graduated from the master鈥檚 program at the Boston College School of Social Work in 2005. 鈥淚t is about supporting people as they rebuild trust in their own voice, choices, and capacity.鈥�

She will be honored for her work on October 26 at 天美传媒appSSW鈥檚 Accompaniment in Action Lecture & Distinguished Alumni Awards Celebration, where she will receive the School鈥檚 Distinguished Alumni Award. The event is part of 天美传媒appSSW鈥檚 ongoing theme of Accompaniment in Action, which focuses on listening, kinship, and mutual transformation.聽

Downey-Leonard credits her experience at 天美传媒appSSW with preparing her to establish Rising Hope, where she provides culturally responsive mental health care to BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and other historically marginalized communities.聽

In particular, she describes her field placements at Dimock Community Health Center and Fenway High School as formative experiences that taught her the importance of building relationships and meeting people where they are鈥攖wo principles that continue to shape her approach to accompaniment.

Downey-Leonard likens the practice to sitting in a hole with someone. 鈥淭here may be a ladder nearby, and I may be able to see a way forward, but that doesn鈥檛 mean the person is ready to climb it,鈥� she says. 鈥淪ometimes my role is to sit beside them for a while, make sure they know they are not alone, help them recognize the resources around them, and ask, 鈥楢re you ready to try one rung?鈥� If the answer is no, we keep working from where they are.鈥�

We caught up with Downey-Leonard to learn more about her clinical practice, the experiences that have shaped her career, and what the Distinguished Alumni Award means to her.

First of all, congratulations on being selected to receive the 2026 Distinguished Alumni Award. What does this award mean to you?

It is truly an honor. To be recognized by my alma mater more than 20 years after graduating feels incredibly meaningful and full circle. When I came to 天美传媒app, I was a young woman still figuring out what kind of social worker I wanted to become. I knew I wanted to help people, but I could never have imagined all the places this career would take me or the different ways I would eventually get to do this work.

I think what I鈥檓 still taking in is having the body of that work reflected back to me in this way. When you鈥檙e doing the work every day, you don鈥檛 always stop to think about its accumulation or impact, you鈥檙e just doing the work. To have 天美传媒app recognize what has grown over these years is incredibly affirming. I鈥檓 deeply grateful for this honor, and I鈥檓 incredibly proud of the work I鈥檝e done, the relationships I鈥檝e built, and the social worker I鈥檝e become.

How did your experiences at 天美传媒appSSW prepare you to establish Rising Hope Counseling and Wellness, where you provide culturally responsive mental health care, particularly to BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and other historically marginalized communities?

I came to 天美传媒appSSW with a strong desire to help people and an instinct for building relationships, but 天美传媒app gave me the clinical language, theoretical foundation, and training to better understand what I had experienced and observed throughout my life. Concepts I later learned to describe clinically鈥攗nderstanding family systems, recognizing strengths, helping people reframe experiences, and meeting people where they are鈥攚ere things I had already seen happening informally in my family and community. 天美传媒app helped me connect those instincts to clinical practice.

My field placements were especially formative. At Dimock Community Health Center, I learned about substance use and recovery, but I also learned important lessons about what culturally responsive care could look like. I watched clinicians build relationships with warmth, honesty, accountability, and deep respect for people鈥檚 stories. At Fenway High School, I continued developing a relationship-centered approach and began discovering the kind of social worker I wanted to become.

Those experiences still show up at Rising Hope today. We value clinical knowledge, but we also make that knowledge accessible and human. We respect people鈥檚 stories, cultures, strengths, identities, and lived experiences. We build relationships. We show up consistently. And we recognize that being clinically skilled and being authentically human are not opposites. 天美传媒app gave me a strong clinical foundation, but it also gave me opportunities to practice, question, change my mind, and continue evolving into the social worker, and eventually the leader, I wanted to be.

You鈥檝e said that people deserve access to healing and happiness that honors their whole selves鈥攖heir culture, stories, bodies, creativity, and communities. What experiences informed this philosophy, and how does it shape the way you work with clients and communities today?

A lot of that philosophy started long before I became a social worker. My grandmother was probably my first example of what I would now call community care. She had an eighth-grade education and had experienced her own share of hardship, but she understood that sometimes people simply needed a place to land. That might mean a meal, a couch to sleep on, a place to cry, a hug, or someone telling you what you needed to hear even when it wasn鈥檛 necessarily what you wanted to hear. She could be very direct, but underneath it was an understanding that people were still worthy of care even when they were struggling.

I grew up in Harlem during the heroin and crack epidemics, and I saw people experiencing addiction, poverty, loss, and other hardships. But I also saw community. I saw people trying to survive, helping one another, and continuing to seek joy in the midst of difficult circumstances. My grandmother used to tell me to be careful about the stones you throw. That stayed with me. It taught me humility and reminded me that none of us should be reduced to the most difficult chapter of our lives.

My clinical education later gave me language and frameworks for many of those early lessons, but the foundation was already there: See the person before the pathology. Today, that means I don鈥檛 get to define healing or happiness for someone else. I can ask questions, remain curious, offer clinical knowledge and support, and help people imagine possibilities, but we have to discover together what healing, joy, and wellness actually look like in the context of their culture, experiences, identities, bodies, relationships, and communities. There can be tremendous freedom in being able to define those things for yourself.

You have more than two decades of experience spanning community mental health, higher education, private practice, clinical supervision, and community education. What would you say is your biggest professional accomplishment to date?

I would say building Rising Hope is my biggest professional accomplishment, not simply because I started a business, but because it has become a culmination of so many parts of my professional and personal evolution. It gave me an opportunity to move from thinking primarily about what I 鈥渉ave to do鈥� within a particular role or system to asking, 鈥淲hat do I get to create? Who do I want to serve? What needs am I seeing, and how can I use my skills to respond?鈥�

Rising Hope has given me the freedom to bring together clinical care, supervision, mentorship, community education, creativity, movement, and relationship-building in ways that feel authentic to who I am as a social worker. It has also allowed me to create space for people who are often accustomed to holding everything together for everyone else, the caregivers, the 鈥渟trong friend,鈥� the high achievers, and people navigating grief, anxiety, life transitions, fertility challenges, pregnancy and infant loss, and other experiences that can leave people feeling like they always have to keep going. I want Rising Hope to be a place where people can put some of that down and be cared for, too.

I鈥檓 also proud of the clinicians, interns, and collaborators who are part of Rising Hope today and those who have been part of the journey along the way, each bringing their own gifts, perspectives, and care to the work. Rising Hope has continued to evolve as I have evolved, and I鈥檝e been able to take lessons from more than two decades of practice, experiences that have shaped me, and things I genuinely love鈥攃onnection, creativity, teaching, mentoring, and community鈥攁nd turn them into ways of serving other people. I鈥檓 proud of what I鈥檝e built, and I鈥檓 equally proud that I鈥檝e allowed myself and the work to keep becoming.

Looking ahead, what do you ultimately hope to accomplish through your work?

Ultimately, I hope my work helps people recognize that their lives can be about more than survival. I want people to know that their stories matter, that they matter, and that while we cannot always choose how our stories begin or what happens to us along the way, we can have a voice in what comes next. Healing does not mean that difficult things never happened or that grief disappears. Sometimes it means learning how to carry what has happened differently, finding support, challenging beliefs that no longer serve us, setting boundaries, and allowing ourselves to imagine what else might be possible.

I especially want people who have become accustomed to being strong, taking care of everyone else, or carrying things alone to know that seeking support is not a failure. We are not meant to do all of this in isolation. I want people to find their people, experience joy, play, try things that scare them a little, ask 鈥渨hat if?鈥� and create lives that feel authentic to them.

I hope that extends to the social workers, clinicians, and students I mentor as well. I want them to know that they can be clinically excellent without leaving themselves outside the room. Their culture, personality, creativity, humor, and lived experiences can inform how they connect with people. If the people I encounter through this work leave knowing that they matter, that they are not alone, and that there are still possibilities available to them, I will feel like I have used my gifts well.

天美传媒appSSW鈥檚 theme for the academic year is Accompaniment in Action, with a particular emphasis on kinship. How do accompaniment and kinship show up in your work?

My understanding of kinship has broadened throughout my life. I was raised by my grandmother, who had herself been raised by her adoptive mother, and I watched her continually expand the definition of family. People became hers, and she became theirs. As I鈥檝e gotten older, I鈥檝e experienced that in my own life through friendships, mentors, colleagues, and communities that have become chosen family.聽

Fenway was especially formative in showing me what that could look like professionally. I arrived expecting colleagues and found a community of people who supported one another personally and professionally, celebrated each other鈥檚 growth, and remained connected as our lives and careers evolved.

Accompaniment, for me, means being willing to meet people where they actually are rather than deciding where I think they should be. I sometimes describe it as sitting in the hole with someone. There may be a ladder nearby, and I may be able to see a way forward, but that doesn鈥檛 mean the person is ready to climb it. Sometimes my role is to sit beside them for a while, make sure they know they are not alone, help them recognize the resources around them, and ask, 鈥淎re you ready to try one rung?鈥� If the answer is no, we keep working from where they are.

That approach is central to my clinical work, supervision, mentorship, and community work. Accompaniment is not about taking over someone鈥檚 journey; it is about supporting people as they rebuild trust in their own voice, choices, and capacity. Kinship reminds me that none of us does that entirely alone. Sometimes the people who walk alongside us become part of the family we choose.

Is there anything else that you would like to add?

I鈥檓 deeply grateful to 天美传媒appSSW for this recognition and to the mentors, colleagues, students, clinicians, clients, friends, family, and communities who have been part of my journey. Social work has given me opportunities to connect with people in ways I never could have imagined when I began this career, and those relationships have shaped me just as much as I hope my work has impacted others.