Ryann McGrath, MSW Student
Clinical Intern
(she/her)

Ryann (she/her) is a second year graduate student at Boston University, pursuing her Master of Social work degree. After working in the corporate and technology world for about a decade, Ryann took the initiative to pivot to a career that combines her passions of helping others, mental health advocacy, and support for the LGBTQ+ community. In previous leadership positions, Ryann sought to make her employees' experiences more meaningful by creating initiatives such as weekly mental health meetings during the Covid-19 pandemic, a mentorship program for burgeoning engineers, and a Women of Engineering support group. She has taken skills she has gleaned in the corporate world such as mentoring, customer service, coaching, and organization and applied them to the social work arena.

Ryann recently completed a clinical internship at the Justice Resource Institute’s Group Adult Foster Care program in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. She found creating connections and providing emotional support to the clients of the program, who experience multiple disabilities while living in poverty, the most rewarding part of the experience. Most of the clients in the program are living with HIV/AIDs and she spent her internship also assisting the residents with activities of daily living (ADLs), providing psycho-education and supportive counseling, and seeing first-hand Massachusetts’ housing policies at work.

After experiencing treatment for mental health disorders for many years, as well as struggling and questioning her own sexual identity, Ryann wants to continue to take what she has learned in BU’s social work program, through life experiences, and personal mental health journey to help others accept themselves and experience queer joy. Ryann approaches client experiences with curiosity, openness, and compassion and is eager to continue using her skills in trauma-informed care, harm reduction, motivational interviewing, and active listening to provide support for her clients.

Ryann often spends her free time seeing live music and comedy shows, taking long walks on the beach with her dog, Clark, and watching Women’s soccer - she just got season tickets to the Boston Legacy’s inaugural season, let’s go Legacy! She’s on a brief break from playing recreational soccer due to the grad school schedule and dislocating her pinky back in 2023 while in goal.