A Path to Meaningful Change: J’nae Agbenla’s Online MSW Journey

Ajibola J’nae Agbenla’s path to social work has been shaped by her commitment to serving children and families across different professional roles. After beginning her career as an officer with the Springfield Police Department, she transitioned to child welfare with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Those experiences showed her how deeply policies and systems shape the lives of children and families and inspired her to pursue an MSW at Illinois. Now, as a first-generation graduate student, J’nae is exploring how she can move beyond working within those systems to help transform them.

Tell us a little about yourself and your journey to the School of Social Work? What led you to pursue social work and your degree at Illinois?

My name is Ajibola J’nae Agbenla, but most people call me J’nae. My journey to social work hasn’t necessarily been a linear one, but looking back, I can see how each experience led me here. I’m a first-generation college student, and I completed my undergraduate education at the University of Illinois Springfield, where I studied criminology and psychology. Even then, I found myself drawn to courses focused on children and families, human development, and social justice. After graduating, I became a police officer with the Springfield Police Department, and it was there that I really discovered I had a true passion for working closely with children and families. Eventually, my career in law enforcement led me to pivot into child welfare with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).

I found working directly with children and families at DCFS really solidified my desire to pursue social work. I realized that I wanted a deeper understanding of not only how to support children and families during difficult situations, but also the larger systems in place that shape their experiences. Since I was already working in the field, pursuing my MSW felt like a natural next step in my professional development.

Illinois stood out to me because I wanted to experience a program that would challenge me academically while still allowing me to continue the work I care about. I also chose Illinois because pursuing an education in a setting where faculty are truly dedicated to their students is paramount for me. I knew that Illinois had esteemed, student focused faculty who were exemplary in their dedication to student success. I wanted an environment where I could foster meaningful relationships with faculty and learn from people who would challenge the way I think. Even in my first semester of the program, that has already happened in ways I didn’t expect.

You’ve had some unique professional experiences, including working as a police officer and now with DCFS. How have those experiences shaped the way you think about social work and the kind of impact you hope to make?

Working in both law enforcement and child welfare has allowed me to see people and communities through very different lenses. Both professions have placed me alongside children and families during some of the most vulnerable, stressful, and emotional moments of their lives. Those experiences have taught me the importance of having empathy, humility, critical thinking, and recognizing that everyone has a story that goes far beyond the circumstances that brought them into contact with a system. As a police officer, I participated in community outreach programs serving marginalized communities that left a lasting impact on my life. Growing up, there were times when my own family had to make difficult decisions between things we wanted and necessities like food and utilities. 

My work at DCFS has deepened my perspective even further because I’ve seen how poverty, trauma, access to resources, policy, and larger systemic issues can intersect in the lives of children and families. For a while, I thought about my impact primarily in terms of how well I could serve families within the systems where I’ve worked. However, my MSW program experience thus far is challenging me to think beyond those terms. I’m now more interested in how I can use my professional experiences in both fields, as well as my formal education, to improve the systems themselves and create meaningful change for children, families, and the larger communities those systems serve.

As a first-generation student, what has your educational journey meant to you personally? What has motivated you along the way, and what does pursuing this path mean to you?

I’ve always said that education was my ticket out. I grew up on the South Side of Chicago with my disabled mother, and we didn’t have a lot financially. My mother faced significant health issues throughout my childhood having sickle cell anemia disease, which prevented my mother from continuing to work and led her to retire at 35 years old. Despite everything my mother navigated, she constantly reminded me that no one could ever take my education away from me. I carried that with me then as a child, and I still carry it with me now as an adult.

School became a place where I felt like new and exciting possibilities existed. Growing up, I was always the student who went in early, stayed late, asked a lot of questions, and fostered meaningful relationships with my teachers. When I finally reached college, I continued this same mindset, and it pushed me to make the dean’s list every semester, graduate at the top of my class, and become a member of two honor societies. It was important to me that I didn’t allow being a first-generation college student limit what I believed I could achieve. Now, being a first-generation graduate student at my dream school pursuing my MSW brings everything full circle and is incredibly personal. I often reflect on where I started and where education has allowed me to go, and I am incredibly grateful for that. However, I also think the meaning of education has evolved for me. When I was younger, I saw education primarily as my own opportunity to create a different life for myself and my family. Now, I see it as an opportunity to gain knowledge and tools needed to facilitate change for other individuals, families, and communities at large, too.

What has your experience been like as an online student at the School of Social Work? Is there anything about the program or the connections you’ve made that has been especially meaningful to you?

My first semester here as an online student at the School of Social Work has been especially meaningful on a personal level. It has significantly changed the way I think about what I want to do within the online MSW program. I entered the program believing I had a very clear idea of my career path and initially planned to pursue the Advanced Clinical concentration. Then I took Dr. Tiffany Laursen’s Social Welfare Policy and Services course this past summer, and it genuinely altered the way I look at social work as a whole and how I envision my own career path.

For the first time, I found myself stepping outside of my daily role at DCFS and really examining the larger system I work within such as how policies are created, how they are implemented, who benefits and who doesn’t, where inequities can exist, and how we as social workers can advocate for change and become effective change agents. Taking that course made me realize that I don’t only want to learn how to work effectively within the child welfare system. I’m now deeply interested in finding ways to help improve the system itself on a macro level.

One of the many lessons Dr. Laursen’s course embedded in me, as I continue further into this program and beyond it, is that effective change agents must have the courage to “color outside of the lines” when working toward meaningful social change. Becoming an effective social work change agent sometimes requires being willing to take informed, calculated risks, challenge the status quo, and push the envelope when existing approaches are no longer enough or are perpetuating systemic inequities for different communities. Systems can be resistant to change, but I’ve now realized that creating new possibilities requires having the courage to imagine what could exist beyond the way things have always been done. I entered the MSW program knowing I wanted to become a stronger social work change agent, but I don’t think I completely understood what that could look like until taking this course. I think this is exactly what getting a good education is supposed to do—it should challenge you, expose you to new ideas, and sometimes lead you somewhere you never expected to go.

What would you say to someone who sees a little of themselves in your story and is wondering whether they can take that next step, too?

I would tell them that you don’t have to have everything figured out before you take the next step. Sometimes taking the next step is exactly how you can discover what you’re capable of and where you’re meant to go. There have been so many points in my life when I couldn’t see the entire path ahead as far as what I wanted to do next. I didn’t know when I started college that I would become a police officer or that the experience would become the catalyst for developing my true passion for serving children and families within the child welfare system.  When I applied to Illinois’ online MSW program, I also thought I knew exactly what direction I wanted to take in social work, but even that vision has quickly evolved after my first semester. It’s okay to pivot. It’s okay to give yourself permission to grow, to question, to change your mind, and to discover new possibilities for yourself. Your background doesn’t disqualify you from the spaces you want to be in. Sometimes the experiences that make your path look very different from everyone else’s are the same experiences that give you something meaningful to contribute once you enter those same spaces you once dreamed of being in.