Using visual social work to inspire wide-spread change

In May 2025, Lisa Whealy receives her Doctor of Social Work (DSW) from the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Her path to completing this degree, however, was a journey of discovery.

At the beginning of 2020, Lisa Whealy was in her final semester to complete a master’s degree in communication management from USC Annenberg, and self-employed as a music journalist and publicist. Then, the pandemic hit.

Fast forward a few months, and Whealy had a shiny new degree in hand — but no clients. She turned to friends for inspiration and support. One launched a nonprofit, and she witnessed how they were making a direct impact in the community.

Serendipitously, an email arrived from USC Social Work that subsequently altered the course of her career. It contained information about the DSW program, and an announcement for the school’s graduate certificate program that could be combined with the degree. One of the courses immediately caught her eye — visual social work.

“When I first applied to the DSW, I limited myself to the possibility of what this degree could be,” Whealy said. “But one of the first courses was to explore all the Grand Challenges for Social Work. That really started to unlock all the different ways that social work, the cogs of the wheel of social work, fit into how somebody comes at this whole thing professionally.”

The DSW prepares agency and community leaders and entrepreneurs to develop practical, applied solutions to large-scale social challenges, and directly impact populations in need. The goal of the visual social work graduate certificate is to expand students' skillsets for understanding and responding to complex human problems through visual storytelling and methodologies. This combination of training and specialization was exactly what Whealy needed coming out of the pandemic.

For her application essay, she provided an analysis of Billie Holiday's live performances of “Strange Fruit,” and how Holiday’s haunting renditions of a song about lynching became the first social justice anthem. As she began her doctoral studies, Whealy quickly began to recognize how music and film can be a powerful tool that impacts how individuals feel about themselves and their communities, as well as to change wide-spread perceptions.

“For me, art forms help us start to decide who we want to be, how we want to be and how we want to show up in the world,” Whealy said.

Music as a feeling of home

Whealy grew up playing blues and jazz and describes music as having a mystical place in her life.

“When you stick your head out the window — whether you're in Brooklyn, Miami, Tucson or L.A., you can identify with where you're at by the sound of the street,” Whealy said. “Whether it's what you listen to on the radio or what you stream, whether that's what you connect to or gives you energy, that's how music gives me a feeling of home.”

Whealy learned through her doctoral studies that a visual social worker is able to match the message they want to convey with the visuals they create. For her first foray into combining her background with social work, she created “Sounds of the Soul,” a documentary celebrating the universal language of music, highlighting its role in shaping identities, communities and cultures. She pays homage to myriad musical expressions and underscores the transformative power of music to touch lives and inspire a narrative for change. The film has been an official selection at film festivals across the country and won numerous awards.

The main component of the DSW is completing a capstone project. Whealy’s capstone, titled Breaking Free: Women’s Journey to Healing, is a series of films, which explores how human beings connect to recover from events that first scar and then create stories that heal.

The first film in her series, “Breaking Free: A Woman’s Journey to Recovery,” focuses on alcohol use disorder (AUD) for women born after 1960. She produced it under the mentorship of Sara Schwartz, associate teaching professor and lead faculty for the graduate certificate in visual social work. The film follows a group of women doing equine therapy in Tucson, Arizona, addressing issues of alcohol use and related trauma. It chronicles stories of resilience and healing, all set to a powerful soundtrack.

“I appreciate Lisa's commitment to exploring visual strategies for capturing and communicating the narratives of women in recovery from alcohol use disorder,” Schwartz said. “I believe that Lisa's short film introduces a unique tool that clinicians and community providers can use to engage women in discussions about treatment and trauma recovery options.”

Bolstering the power of the arts, one child at a time

Overall, Whealy is focused on promoting a healthier society through her work. She wants to reflect how individuals are connecting with each other and the world around them, and in doing so, create an effect that betters society as a whole.

In addition to her film work, she launched a nonprofit organization with some friends — Sounds of Humanity Music Project — dedicated to funding music education programs in schools.

“I realized that music is really humanity,” Whealy said. “All our voices contribute to the music of us. We all have different voices that we contribute to the sound of the symphony of us.”

Through the nonprofit, she and her partners are building a community of like-minded individuals working to ensure that access to music and arts education is not determined by one’s zip code. The goal is to build a sustainable donation stream that provides arts-related fellowships, scholarships and program creation to keep the arts alive for youth across the country.

"I've got to stay true to me and continue to tell my truth and what I have been doing for the last eight years of my life,” Whealy said. “Reframing what I know about the world around me, learning more about it and how to present that to others — to share what could be.”