American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare

Gail Steketee, PhD

Active | Inducted in 2012

Bio

Dr. Gail Steketee is Professor and Dean Emerita at the Boston University School of Social Work where she served as Dean from 2005 through 2017, helping advance the School’s research and academic profile to top 10 U.S. News and World Report status. A graduate of Harvard University, she received her MSW and PhD from Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research. Her scholarly work has focused on developing and testing treatments for obsessive compulsive (OC) disorder and OC spectrum conditions, including hoarding disorder over the past 20 years. She has published over 200 journal articles and chapters, and more than a dozen books on these topics. These include Frost and Steketee’s non-fiction best seller Stuff (Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt, 2010) and the Oxford Handbook for Hoarding and Acquiring (Oxford, 2014). She published the first empirically based self-help book (When Once is Not Enough) and clinician guide for OCD (Treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Her work has been featured in media outlets including the New York Times, New Yorker, Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report, and CNN. She is a Fellow of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies and served as President from 2016-17 and board member from 2015-2018. An elected Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare since 2012, she served on the Board and as Vice-President from 2014-19. Dr. Steketee has received several career awards including the Outstanding Career Achievement Award from the International OCD Foundation. She has served on the editorial boards of several journals and frequently lectured and conducted workshops on hoarding and related disorders for professional and public audiences in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Steketee retired as Dean and Professor Emerita from Boston University in 2019. She continues to serve as mentor to new assistant professors for the Academy mentoring program and to review for selected journals in her specialized area of expertise.

http://www.bu.edu/ssw/profile/gail-steketee/