About Dina

Dina Paul grew up in New York City and went west young, first to San Francisco and then to Sacramento. At Sacramento State, she discovered social work almost by accident, when an academic minor became a calling. She later earned her Masters of Social Work at Columbia University.

A retired Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Dina worked for more than thirty years across child welfare, foster care, psychiatric crisis work, emergency departments, medical settings, and nursing homes. Her work involved finding people, assessing them, sitting with them, and recording what could be known. She loved the people more than the systems, the rooms more than the files.

Dina lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband, Brian, and their poodle, with extended family nearby. She bakes forty-eight-hour chocolate chip cookies and makes jewelry, a craft she began the year her son was born.

Needlepoints by Gisele Kaufman, Dina’s grandmother.

Moses Kaufman, Dina’s grandfather, followed his father and grandfather into the diamond trade. Dina remembers holding his hand on Fifth Avenue as he pointed out pieces in the Tiffany & Co. windows, set with diamonds he had supplied.