Cindy Dubuque-Gallo, LMSW, MAT
Cindy Dubuque-Gallo, LMSW, MAT is a nationally recognized social justice advocate and political activist. She has served on numerous boards and commissions including the San Francisco Human Rights Advisory Board and the Hartford Commission for LGBT Issues. Cindy is passionate about political social work and has spoken at the Nancy Humphrey’s Campaign School for Political Social Work for nearly a decade and served as a congressional intern for Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA). Additionally, post MSW she has over 10 years of social work practice working as an educator, policy practitioner, and researcher. This work includes lobbying and consulting to promote social welfare policies to increase workers’ wages, to end homelessness and to improve health equity.
Cindy has taught courses on Human Behavior in the Social Environment, Introduction to Social Work, Social Welfare Policy, Macro Foundations, Community Practice, and Political Advocacy, for over a decade, in-person, virtually (synchronously) and in hybrid formats. She received that 2021 Student Award for Teaching in Social Work from the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work.
As a doctoral candidate Cindy’s research focuses on the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP)—aka universal free meals, of the National School Lunch Act. Using Geographic Information Systems software, Cindy is examining the implementation of the CEP program across Connecticut school districts. This research is grounded in a disparate racial impact theory framework and seeks to determine if there is a disparate impact in the policy’s implementation. This research emerged from Cindy’s work as chair of Board of Missions at her church, when she learned that some students had hundreds of dollars of lunch debt in the first few months of school. Since the start of this research journey, Cindy has successfully lobbied for legislation that requires Connecticut schools to refer students with more than 30 meals worth of debt to the school’s homeless services liaison. Additionally, she worked with the Connecticut legislature to increase eligibility for free meals to 200% of the federal poverty level. Cindy is committed to actionable research that drives policy change.
Cindy currently serves as a legislative liaison for the CT Office of Health Strategy working to advance quality, accessible, and affordable healthcare for all residents.
Research Interests:
Voting and Civic Engagement
Social Welfare Policies
Political Social Work
Religion and Spirituality
Spiritual Social Work
LGBT
