UMSON Pride Month Event

Cultural Competencies: Effects of Misgendering 

with Randall Leonard, LCSW-C

Join Maryland social worker Randall Leonard, LCSW-C, (they / them/ theirs) in exploring client-centered techniques to reach, connect, and serve transgender and gender noncomforming peoples. This virtual presentation will focus on how misgendering and "deadnaming" of clients can create unsafe healthcare experiences, diminish health outcomes, and damage rapport with clients. Participants will also explore how emotions and defense mechanisms affect human behavior in response to socially engineered trauma in healthcare settings. 

Speaker Bio

Maryland-native, Randall Leonard (they/ them/ theirs) is a proud nonbinary licensed clinical social worker and a staff therapist at Chase Brexton Health Care specializing in the care of LGBTQIA individuals. They currently hold healing space focused on the liberation of Black and Queer people through encouraging authenticity, reconnecting to history and lineage, and empowering shared lived experiences. They also facilitate a weekly group for trans and gender-diverse people of color to process intersectionality topics between race, culture, and gender.

Randall holds a Master of Social Work from the University of Maryland School of Social Work with a concentration in clinical behavioral health. As a strong advocate for transgender and gender non-conforming individuals, their recent achievements include testifying for the "X" gender marker on Maryland's drivers licenses, which passed and was enacted in 2019, and being featured as part of Sephora's 2019 "Belong to Something Beautiful" gender-diversity campaign.

Randall has previously served survivors of intimate partner violence at Family and Children's Services, where they provided individual therapy and a weekly support group. In addition, they worked as a Behavioral Specialist in the Emergency Department of Union Memorial Hospital. They started their social work career working with people with severe and persistent mental illness at Sheppard Pratt Health Systems.