Pioneering Contributions
Dorothy Faller, MSSA, ACSW, started her social work career as a child welfare caseworker in Oregon, a social services consultant in child welfare and programs for the elderly in Indiana, and as a Regional Social Services and Fiscal Supervisor at the Ohio Department of Human Services.
Her work, however, as an international social work practitioner is at the core of her pioneering contributions. In the area of social work practice, Faller was far ahead of her time—a time when most of those advocating for international social work were academics such as Herman Stein and James Midgley. Just six years after obtaining her master’s in social work degree, Faller’s international social work career was launched when she became the Executive Director of the Cleveland International Program (CIP) in 1981. She served in that capacity until 1999 when she became Secretary General and CEO of the Council of International Programs USA (CIPUSA) until 2002. As Secretary General and Executive Director of the Cleveland International Program (CIP) for 21 years, Faller has worked with over 150 countries, and over 500 individuals, providing long-term internships in a variety of professional careers and training, but mostly in social work, both in the U.S. and overseas. Her training programs include cross-cultural awareness and values, conflict resolution, substance abuse prevention, and fundraising.
Faller retired as President of Faller International Training in 2011. She has been active in nonprofit boards since that time, including the Carolyn L. Farrell Foundation, dedicated to working with individuals with dementia and their family caregivers. Her lengthy list of civic leadership and service includes Member, Special Programs Committee, City Club of Cleveland (2010-2015); Member, Diversity Change Team, Westshore Unitarian Universalist Church (2009-2012); Chair, Anti-Fracking Group, West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church (2011); Member, Board of Directors, West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church (1978-1981), (2000-2003) and (2024-2027); Volgograd Free Speech Forum (1995-2001).
Career Highlights
Dorothy Faller received her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology at the University of Illinois in 1960. In 1975, she graduated with a MSSA from the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. She was a member of the first management class and also took coursework in clinical social work. This type of educational combination—in administration and clinical social work—was not common in 1975 and the same can be said today 50 years later. It is, however, this combination that prepared Dorothy for her professional in working with and leading many local, national, and international organizations and the people they served around the world.
Faller worked in several leadership roles in a career that spanned four decades. Initially, she taught administration as an adjunct professor at the Mandel School. She worked with the school on their alumni committee and on fundraising appeals for many years, and served on the Mandel School’s Local International Konnections Committee (LINK). With Dean Richard L. Edwards, Faller was instrumental in bringing the mid-career professionals from Romania to the United States in 30 years, after the demise of Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime in 1995. Her advocacy and work to find placements for Romanian sociologist and researchers led to many placements at the Mandel School and other nonprofit organizations in the greater Cleveland area. At one point, the count was 28 mid-career professionals who benefited from short-term training and returned to help build Romania’s democratic future and social work education there. From this involvement, Faller played a key role in bringing 10 Hungarian academics—sociologists, pedagogists, and lawyers—to Cleveland through a project developed by M.C. “Terry” Hokenstad-, Jr.—to start social work education in Hungary. In 2002, Dorothy was instrumental in planning and implementing Project SWEEP (Social Work Education in Ethiopia Partnership) which resulted in the first-ever masters in social work and the first-ever PhD in Social Work and Social Development in Ethiopia. With Alice Butterfield and Abye Tasse, Faller helped found the social work Master’s Program in Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia and taught there.
Faller's community activity included work on Cleveland’s desegregation efforts, service on the board and executive committees of the Ohio and the National Association of Social Workers and leadership activities with her church. She served on the board of the National Network of Social Work Managers and as head of the board of the Gestalt Institute. She began and led an environmental activist and educational program in her church called Faith Communities Together for a Sustainable Future for 8 years; she remains active in a leadership role on the Ohio-wide program of the same name. She is on the board of the Carolyn L. Farrell Foundation programmatically serving Alzheimer patients and their caregivers. In 2020-2023 Faller designed and implemented with others the “Listening Project” a racial awareness model for whites in her Unitarian Church, a project that was selected for national exposure through the Unitarian Universalist network.
Biographic Information
Dorothy Faller was born to Albert T. Anderson and Lillian G. Anderson in Chicago, Illinois on July 6, 1939. She attended Chicago’s Hyde Park High School where she met and married the love of her life, Adolph “Dolph” Faller. She is still in touch with class members who get together regularly to celebrate their work in desegregation and other social change efforts over their long history of lives lived..
Faller built international exchange programs in social work for the reverse exchange of professionals from developing countries to the USA. Each year, the Cleveland International Program brought foreign social workers, youth leaders and/or special educators (ages 23-40) to Cleveland for an 11-week or year-long field experience in social agencies. Living with host families, participants learned about American culture and human services while informing Clevelanders about their own methods and traditions. The U.S. Information Agency and field work agencies, governments, foundations, corporations, and individual donations financed the effort, although after 1991 USIA grants diminished significantly.
By 1987, there were 12 affiliates throughout the U.S. operating under the Council of International Programs USA, which although founded in Cleveland in 1965, had moved to Washington, DC in 1991. In 1995, Faller became director of the Council of International Programs USA, now headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. Under Faller’s leadership, by the 1990s, CIP USA had expanded its scope of participation to include public administrators, architects, engineers, and bankers. In total, more than 1,900 people from 110 nations participated in the exchanges through the Cleveland program alone by 1995.
Significant Achievements and Awards
Fallers honors and awards include: Honoree, Hall of Achievement, Mandel School, Case Western Reserve University (n .d.); Honoree, Honorary Life Member, Cleveland Rotary (2003); Grantee, Community Involvement in the Criminal Justice Administration, Romania (1999-2001); Honoree, Honorary Life Member, Fulbright Association (1999); Honoree, Social Worker of the Year, Cleveland Unit, International Federation of Social Workers (1986); Recipient, Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award; Honoree, Marquis Who’s Who Top Professional.
Faller has received continual mention in Who’s Who in the World, and has been in Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in America and the Directory of Distinguished Americans.
Significant Publications
- Butterfield, A.K., Olcon, K., & Scherrer, J. (2017). Hosting social work visitors in the United States through international exchange. In A.K. Butterfield & C.S. Cohen (Eds.), Practicing as a Social Work Educator in International Collaboration (pp. 115-141). Alexandria, VA: CSWE Press.
- Holmström, S. (2015). The ‘Council of International Programs’ during five decades from a Finnish social workers’ perspective. In E. Kruse (Ed.) (2015). Internationaler Austausch in der Sozialen Arbeit: Entwicklungen - Erfahrungen – Erträge (pp. 239-245). Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer.
- Johnson Butterfield, A.K., Tasse, A., & Linsk, N. (2009). The Social Work Education in Ethiopia Partnership. In C.E. Stout (Ed.), The New Humanitarians: Inspiration, Innovations, and Blueprints for Visionaries, Volume 2 (pp. 57-83). Westport, CT: Praeger.
- Merola, D.A. (2015). The CIF model as an educational tool. In E. Kruse (Ed.) (2015). Internationaler Austausch in der Sozialen Arbeit: Entwicklungen - Erfahrungen – Erträge (pp. 187-202). Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer.