BC Provost David Quigley described meaningful accompaniment as sustained, embodied, imaginative, and contemplative. Photos by Tony Rinaldo.
Sustained. Embodied. Imaginative. Contemplative.
Those are the four words that David Quigley used to describe accompaniment in a talk at the Yawkey Athletics Center in October.
Quigley, the Robert L. and Judith T. Winston Provost and Dean of Faculties at Boston College, argued that accompaniment should be sustained, extending beyond one-off encounters; embodied through presence in communities; imaginative, rooted in empathy and openness to new possibilities; and contemplative, leaving room for reflection and discernment.
“It’s not a one-off,” said Quigley, who gave the keynote address at the School of Social Work’s annual Accompaniment in Action Lecture and Distinguished Alumni Awards celebration. “And I think universities, social workers, or administrators who go in and do a once-a-year or once-a-decade community encounter are doomed to failure.”
His talk dovetailed with BCSSW’s ongoing theme, “Accompaniment in Action,” which focuses on listening, kinship, and mutual transformation.
Anita Peete and LaMone Downey-Leonard celebrate Downey-Leonard’s Distiguished Alumni Award.
Flanked by a bouquet of flowers and a large maroon banner emblazoned with the BC seal, Quigley named three Jesuits who have influenced his ongoing education about accompaniment.
Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program, has helped shape Quigley’s view that the act of accompaniment is less about telling and more about showing. As he put it: “It’s the work that he does day and night, 24-7, 365 days a year for decades upon decades. And I think there’s a real Jesuit truth to that.”
John T. Butler, S.J., the newly inaugurated president of BC, convinced Quigley to complete the full 30-Day Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Quigley spent a month at the Gonzaga Eastern Point Retreat House, a Jesuit ministry in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he prayed daily, sat in silent contemplation, and met with a spiritual director one-on-one.
He said the experience reinforced the importance of balancing action with contemplation and discernment. “How do we commit to the next morning’s work, the next week’s work, the long sweep of a career?” he said. “I think that that sense of pulling us to moments of contemplation and reflection is essential to accompaniment in action.”
Students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends packed they Yawkey Center for the annual Accompaniment in Action Lecture and Distinguished Alumni Awards Celebration.
Fr. Stephen Schloesser, S.J., a Jesuit priest and history professor at Loyola University Chicago, helped Quigley understand the role that social work has played in connecting Jesuit universities to their surrounding communities. Drawing on Schloesser’s work, Quigley pointed out that the “second founding” of Jesuit education took place at Jesuit universities, particularly in schools of social work that built partnerships with the neighborhoods they served.
“That for me has been really provocative,” said Quigley, a historian by training, “and a call to the imagination as we think about accompaniment in action not as a historical relic, but as a living resource for us to lean into as we think about the work of this University over the next few years.”
During a Q&A facilitated by Tomeu Estelrich, director of the Center for Ignatian Spirituality at BC, an audience member asked whether accompaniment is fundamentally about helping another person or about transforming the relationship between the person offering help and the person receiving it. In response, Quigley rejected accompaniment as a unilateral act of helping and described it instead as an “encounter with the divine.” He said that “profound encounters” between secular social workers and non-believing clients bring the divine to life.
“In a Jesuit institution, some of us like to land on the Jesuit Catholic way of understanding that,” he said. “But I think it’s true to this kind of openness to what generative divine possibilities can be found.”
Smitha Rao and Shanta Pandey celebrate Rao’s Distinguished Recent Alumni Award.
Estelrich asked Quigley whether it’s possible to learn vulnerability in a classroom rather than through the process of accompanying other people.
Quigley pointed to a recent walk through Boston’s South End with students from one of his classes, when one student experienced an uncomfortable interaction with a passerby. The student did not dismiss the person, Quigley said, but rather became more conscious of how he positioned himself as a visitor in the community.
“There’s only so much I can do with a PowerPoint and around a seminar table,” he said.
The principles that Quigley discussed—sustained encounters, empathy, contemplation—were embodied in the careers of two BCSSW alumni who were honored for their contributions to the field of social work.
Twenty-two years ago, LaMone Downey-Leonard, MSW’05, was working as a social work intern at Fenway High School when she met sophomore Anita Peete. Downey-Leonard quickly became someone Peete could trust, and the two have stayed close ever since.
Downey-Leonard wrote a clinical paper about Peete, and it was Peete, MSW’26, who nominated Downey-Leonard for the Distinguished Alumni Award and introduced her in the Yawkey Center.
“It’s an amazing honor to be introduced by someone that has taught me as much as I taught her,” said Downey-Leonard. “So this is such a beautiful full-circle moment.”
After Quigley’s talk, Tomeu Estelrich faciliated a Q&A.
Downey-Leonard added that her field placement at Fenway High School taught her the importance of building relationships and meeting people where they are—two principles that continue to shape her approach to social work as the founder, CEO, and clinical director of Rising Hope Counseling and Wellness.
But it was her grandmother, who raised her in a 28-story building in Harlem, who first taught her the value of love, humanity, and service. “Looking back, my grandmother was my first social worker,” she said, “and my neighborhood was my first social service agency.”
Today, Downey-Leonard provides culturally responsive mental health care to BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and other historically marginalized communities, creating a space where clients can feel seen, heard, and supported without having to constantly explain themselves.
“I’m proud to have built a practice that reflects who I am, what I value, and my belief that there are many paths to healing,” she said.
Like Downey-Leonard, Smitha Rao works to ensure that marginalized communities have a say in addressing problems that directly affect them.
Rao, who received the Distinguished Recent Alumni Award, examines how communities experience and respond to environmental challenges, including extreme weather, air pollution, climate change, and other ecological issues.
In her acceptance speech, Rao credited BCSSW with preparing her to conduct research that matters.
“I really wanted to know how to do research,” said Rao, who graduated from the doctoral program at BCSSW in 2021 and currently serves as an associate professor at The Ohio State University College of Social Work. “Now I see academia as this space where communities, ideas, the next generation of students and scholars, and imagination can really take root.”
Rao acknowledged her advisor, Shanta Pandey, for accompanying her and her fellow students at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It may have been a bad time to write a dissertation, look for a job, and be away from family, Rao said, but Pandey’s presence ensured that no one felt alone.
“She made time every week to connect with all of us to ensure that we had some semblance of a community in that time,” said Rao. “I don’t know how we survived,” she added, “but I know that it took community and intention to find that purpose.”
