MSW alum Stavi Xinos, who graduated yesterday, and MSW alum Dev Hayostek were both named Bright Young People 2024 by Allies for Health + Wellbeing. They will be recognized Friday, May 3rd. Read about their work and commitments to justice, equity, and inclusion:
Stavi Xinos
Stavi was a master of social work student at the University of Pittsburgh and an intern for The Open Door in 2023-2024.
“I really want to change the world, even in some small capacity,” Stavi said. “I’m very passionate about harm reduction. I’m interested in feminist, community-based, social justice-oriented research that can help inform and reform our policies.”
During undergraduate work, Stavi was placed for field work at a shelter for women who had experienced domestic violence. Stavi has also done research into domestic violence in marginalized communities, which now informs Stavi’s work at The Open Door.
“Part of my work at The Open Door is training the staff on how to intervene in domestic violence so we can build community capacity for it,” Stavi said. “I’ve customized all my work to include and uplift and focus on diverse survivors. When you experience any type of non-normative or marginalized identity, you experience domestic violence very differently. There are a lot of unique barriers to achieving safety and wellbeing.”
Dev Hayostek
MSW alum Dev Hayostek, LSW (he/him/his, they/them/theirs) is lead prevention educator in the Office for Sexual Violence Prevention & Education which is housed in the Office for Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion at the University of Pittsburgh.
“We don’t talk a lot about relationships and what it looks like when it’s healthy,” Dev said. “We see a lot if depiction in the media of what it looks like when it’s not healthy, when it’s harmful. It’s important to me that both we normalize having conversations about relationships that are not working out the way that we had hoped. There’s more people than we realize that are in unhealthy relationships, that are in abusive relationships, that are victims and survivors of sexual violence, and they don’t know it because they don’t have the language. We need that language to be able to communicate, and we’re just not taught it.”
Dev works with students, faculty and staff at Pitt, doing programming around healthy relationships and conflict resolution as well as discussing the nuances of sexual violence. “It can be very heavy sometimes, but I love my job,” Dev said.