Carol Christ
11th Chancellor (Emerita) of the University of California, Berkeley
Carol Christ began her term as the 11th chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley on July 1, 2017. A celebrated scholar of Victorian literature, Christ is also well known as an advocate for quality, accessible public higher education, a proponent of the value of a broad education in the liberal arts and sciences, and a champion of women’s issues and diversity on college campuses.
Christ spent more than three decades as a professor and administrator at UC Berkeley before serving as president of Smith College, one of the country’s most distinguished liberal arts colleges, from 2002 to 2013. She returned to Berkeley in January 2015 to direct the campus’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, and was appointed interim executive vice chancellor and provost in April 2016 before being named chancellor in March 2017. Since her return to Berkeley, she has worked to foster community and improve the campus climate for people of all backgrounds, celebrate the institution's longstanding commitment to free speech, strengthen Berkeley's financial position, address a housing shortage, and develop a ten-year strategic plan for the campus.
As president of Smith for more than a decade, Christ supervised the development of the nation’s only accredited engineering program at a women’s college, oversaw a significant rise in student diversity, expanded Smith’s global activities and reach, managed a major campus capital planning program, and shepherded the college through strategic planning exercises designed to improve its academic and financial models within the context of changing trends in higher education.
Prior to joining Smith, Christ served as UC Berkeley’s executive vice chancellor and provost from 1994 until 2000. During her six years as the campus’s top academic officer, she sharpened Berkeley’s intellectual focus, strengthening many of the institution’s top-rated departments in the humanities and sciences as well as advancing major initiatives in areas including neuroscience and bioengineering.
Christ received her B.A. (1966) from Douglass College, and her M.Ph. (1969) and Ph.D. (1970) from Yale University. She joined the Berkeley English faculty in 1970, and in addition to her other roles, has served as chair of that department, dean of the Division of Humanities, and provost for the College of Letters and Science. Christ has authored two books, The Finer Optic: The Aesthetic of Particularity in Victorian Poetry (1975) and Victorian and Modern Poetics (1994), and has edited or co-edited several others, including The Norton Anthology of English Literature. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
Christ was married for 21 years to Paul Alpers, a professor of English and founding director of UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities, until his death in 2013. She has two grown children, Jonathan and Elizabeth Sklute, from a previous marriage, as well as two grandchildren. She lives in Berkeley.
Robert Strand
Executive Director, Center for Responsible Business
Robert Strand is the Executive Director of the Center for Responsible Business and Lecturer at the Berkeley Haas School of Business. He is also Executive Director of the Nordic Center at UC Berkeley. His research and teaching compares U.S. and Nordic approaches to sustainable and socially responsible business. Strand teaches the suite of courses “Sustainable Capitalism in the Nordics?” at Haas that leverages his forthcoming book “Nordic Capitalism: Lessons for Realizing Sustainable Capitalism.”
Prior to joining Haas, he was a professor with the Copenhagen Business School, and had previously spent a decade in industry with IBM and Boston Scientific in a range of roles in manufacturing, supply chain, marketing, strategy, and investor relations. He holds a PhD in corporate social responsibility from the Copenhagen Business School, an MBA in international business from the University of Minnesota, and a BS in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin. He was a United States Fulbright Scholar to Norway. With his spouse Sarah, he is the proud parent of two wonderful children, Jonas and Mikkel.
Alison Gopnik
Professor in the Department of Psychology
Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. She received her BA from McGill University, and her PhD. from Oxford University. She is an internationally recognized leader in the study of children’s learning and development and was the first to argue that children’s minds could help us understand deep philosophical questions. She was also one of the founders of the field of “theory of mind”, an originator of the “theory theory” of children’s development, and more recently, introduced the idea that probabilistic models and Bayesian inference could be applied to children’s learning. She has held a Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences Fellowship, the Moore Distinguished Scholar fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, and the All Souls College Distinguished Visiting Fellowship at Oxford.
Lisa Garcia Bedolla
Vice Provost for Graduate Studies, Dean of the Graduate Division, and a Professor in the Graduate School of Education.
She uses the tools of social science to reveal the causes of educational and political inequalities in the United States, considering differences across the lines of ethnorace, gender, class, geography, et cetera. She believes an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach is critical to recognizing the complexity of the contemporary United States. She has used a variety of social science methods – participant observation, in-depth interviewing, survey research, field experiments, and geographic information systems (GIS) – to shed light on this question.
She has published four books and dozens of research articles, earning five national book awards and numerous other awards. She has consulted for presidential campaigns and statewide ballot efforts and has partnered with over a dozen community organizations working to empower low-income communities of color. Through those partnerships, she has developed a set of best practices for engaging and mobilizing voters in these communities, becoming one of the nation’s foremost experts on political engagement within communities of color.
Her current projects include: a multi-year study of Integrated Voter Engagement efforts conducted by six community organizations in California (with Marisa Abrajano, UC San Diego); the development of a multi-dimensional data system, called Data for Social Good, that can be used to track and improve organizing efforts on the ground; and the creation of a university-based center (the Center on Democracy and Organizing) to support academics interested in conducting research in partnership with practitioners and that centers addressing inequality (with Hahrie Han, Johns Hopkins University; and Taeku Lee, UC Berkeley).
Professor García Bedolla earned her PhD in political science from Yale University and her BA in Latin American Studies and Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley
Darren Cooke
Executive Director of the Life Sciences Entrepreneurship Center
Darren Cooke is the Executive Director of the Berkeley Life Sciences Entrepreneurship Center, professional faculty at the Berkeley Haas School of Business, and chairs the Bio Track at the Berkeley SkyDeck startup accelerator. Darren teaches entrepreneurship at Berkeley Haas, and the I-Corps program for the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. He is an investor and former chair of Medical Device and Digital Health at Life Science Angels. As an attorney, he led the IP legal team for the life science tools group of Bio-Rad Laboratories, and was a life sciences patent litigator at Covington & Burling. Before law school Darren was a mechanical engineer developing cochlear implants at UCSF.
Margi Wald
Lecturer, College Writing Programs and Director
Margi Wald, M.A. Applied Linguistics, University of Houston, teaches first-year writing, reading, and grammar & vocabulary courses specifically designed for multilingual students. She directs UC Berkeley's Summer English Language Studies program, co-edits The CATESOL Journal, and has extensive experience presenting at and organizing conferences for English language teaching organizations. She co-edited Teaching U.S.-educated Multilingual Student Writers (with Mark Roberge and Kay Losey) and co-authored the textbook Exploring Options in Academic Writing: Effective Vocabulary and Grammar Use (with Jan Frodesen). Her research focuses on corpus-based materials development for and academic literacy development among immigrant ESL students.
John Campbell
Professor of Philosophy
John Campbell's main interests are in theory of meaning, metaphysics, and the philosophy of psychology. He is currently working on causation in psychology. He is the author of Past, Space and Self (1994), Reference and Consciousness (2002), and (with Quassim Cassam), Berkeley's Puzzle (2014). He was president of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology 2003-2006. He has given the Whitehead Lectures at Harvard, the Carnap Lectures at Bochum, the Simon Lectures at Toronto, the Clark Lecture at Indiana and the Gramlich Lecture at Dartmouth. He was Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 2003-2004, and British Academy Research Reader 1995-1997. He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships. He was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in 2017.
Maximillian Auffhammer
George Pardee Jr. Professor of International Sustainable Development, UC BerkeleyRegional Associate Dean, Letters and Sciences
Maximilian Auffhammer is the George Pardee Jr. Professor of International Sustainable Development and Associate Dean in the Division of Social Sciences at UC Berkeley. Professor Auffhammer received his B.S. in environmental science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1996, a M.S. in environmental and resource economics at the same institution in 1998 and a Ph.D. in economics from UC San Diego in 2003. He joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in 2003. His research focuses on environmental and resource economics, energy economics and applied econometrics. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Energy and Environmental Economics group, a Humboldt Fellow, and a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His research has appeared in The American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Economic Journal, the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, The Energy Journal and other academic journals. Professor Auffhammer is the recipient of the 2017 Cheit Teaching Award in the Haas School of Business, the 2009 Campus Distinguished Teaching Award the 2007 Cozzarelli Prize awarded by the National Academies of Sciences, and the 2007 Sarlo Distinguished Mentoring Award.
Alex Budak
Lecturer, Management of Organizations
Alex Budak is a social entrepreneur and professional faculty member at Berkeley Haas. Budak created and teaches a transformative course called “Becoming a Changemaker,” and is Executive Director of the Berkeley Haas Global Access Program. He co-founded and now advises the social enterprise StartSomeGood.com, which has helped over 1,000 changemakers in 50 countries raise over $10 Million USD.
Prior to joining Berkeley Haas, Budak ran Scandinavia’s leading incubator and helped Change.org raise $30M from impact investors. He’s written about leadership for FastCompany and The Guardian and lectured on social entrepreneurship in venues ranging from the White House to the World Bank to Cambodia to Ukraine to the Arctic Circle.
He has an MPP from Georgetown and a BA from UCLA, and also received UCLA’s 2017 Recent Alumnus of the Year award. His new book, Becoming A Changemaker, was published in September 2022.
Linda M. Burton
Dean, Berkeley Social Welfare
Eugene and Rose Kleiner Chair for the Study of Processes, Practices and Policies in Aging
Prior to her arrival at Berkeley in 2019, Dean Burton was the James B. Duke Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University. In her role as dean of Social Sciences at Duke University's Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, she was responsible for handling all matters relative to 239 faculty members in 14 departments and programs, including African/African American Studies, Economics, History, Political Science, and Women's Studies. She simultaneously co-directed the undergraduate program on International Comparative Studies, was co-chair of the university's Task Force on Bias and Hate Issues, and served on the university's union bargaining team in negotiations with the Service Employees' International Union (SEIU) on behalf of Duke's adjunct professors. Prior to joining Duke, she was a faculty member at Penn State for over 20 years and served as director of its Center for Human Development and Family Research in Diverse Contexts from 1998 to 2006. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Southern California. For a detailed bio, please click here.
Carmen Acevedo Butcher
Lecturer, College Writing Programs
Carmen Acevedo Butcher is on the faculty in U.C. Berkeley’s College Writing Programs. She is an author, teacher, and an award-winning translator. Her dynamic work around the evolution of language and the necessity of just and inclusive language has garnered interest from various media, including the BBC and NPR’s Morning Edition. A Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year, she was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Sogang University, a Fulbright Scholar at the University of London, and a Rotary Graduate Scholar at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg.
Carmen and her students were interviewed by BBC World Service for “Dialects and Evolution” in the Compass series “The Future of English.” Listen in at 22:30. During two Lecturer Teaching Fellowships, Carmen collaborated with students to create teaching websites on Weebly and Tumblr. Her most recent innovative pedagogy projects are “Ally Is a Verb” for LTF and as a co-developer of Berkeley Changemaker® Public Speaking. Visit her professional website, CWP faculty page, and Shambhala author page. She holds an MA and a PhD, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Georgia.
Anthony Cascardi
Professor, Sidney and Margaret Ancker Distinguished Professor
Anthony J. Cascardi is the former Dean of Arts and Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Professor of Comparative Literature, Rhetoric, and Spanish. He is former Director of the Townsend Center for the Humanities and of the Arts Research Center. Cascardi’s research interests include the relations between literature and philosophy; aesthetic theory; the novel; and early modern Europe. His recent publications include the two edited volumes “Art and Aesthetics After Adorno” and “Poiesis and Modernity,” and the books “Cervantes, Literature, and the Discourse of Politics” and “The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Philosophy” and "Francisco Goya and the Art of Critique."
Jill Finlayson
Director of the Expanding Diversity and Gender Equity in Tech (EDGE in Tech™) Initiative at UC
Jill Finlayson is the Director of the Expanding Diversity and Gender Equity in Tech (EDGE in Tech™) Initiative at UC, where she supports research initiatives to promote equitable participation of women and other under-included identities in tech. Prior to Berkeley, she led mentorship and startup programs for Singularity University Ventures, the Toys category at eBay, an online community for Skoll Foundation, marketing at startups, and the World Bank’s Striking Poverty. She speaks on inclusive, impact-oriented innovation, equitable workplaces, and effective leadership. She has mentored global TechWomen, startup founders, and student innovators. Finlayson is a graduate of UC Berkeley.
Janet L. Yellen
Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor Emeritus of Business Administration
Yellen graduated summa cum laude in economics from Brown University (1967) and received a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University (1971). She then served as an assistant professor of economics at Harvard University until 1976. In 1977–78 she worked as an economist for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and in 1978–80 she served as a lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 1980 Yellen joined the faculty of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, where she conducted research and taught macroeconomics at all levels, receiving numerous teaching awards. She was appointed Bernard T. Rocca, Jr. Professor of International Business and Trade in 1992 and Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Economics in 1999. She subsequently became professor emeritus at the Haas School of Business.
In 1994 Yellen took a leave of absence from Berkeley to serve as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, a post she held until 1997. She then left the Fed to become head of Pres. Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers until 1999. She concurrently chaired the Economic Policy Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Kelly Chou
Lecturer, Sustainable Design
Kelly Chou is a sustainable design educator with a background in green chemistry and bioplastics research. At Schoolab, she develops and leads open innovation programs such as "Deplastify the Planet," utilizing her expertise in chemistry, entrepreneurship, and design methodologies to guide students in exploring new perspectives and strategies on the plastic problem.
David Dodick
Lecturer, Dean’s Office of Arts and Humanities
David Dodick received his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Toronto. With an interest in language, literacy, and technology, he has studied the implications for native and non-native English-speaking students of teaching and learning in the digital era, and created one of the first cross-cultural learning projects on the Internet, linking 171 students and teachers in four countries and two languages.
Dr. Dodick has served as a lecturer in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, a lecturer in the Linguistics and Language Development Department at San José State University, an Adjunct Professor in the Master of Science in eLearning Program at California State University, East Bay, and a lecturer in the English for Foreign Students Program (Summer Session) at Stanford University. He has also consulted to the U.S. Department of Education, the Stanford Graduate Schools of Education and Business, and Silicon Valley technology companies.
Ricardo San Martin
Director and Co-Founder, Alt: Meat Lab
Ricardo San Martin PhD is the director and co-founder of the Alt: Meat Lab at UC Berkeley’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. He is an inventor and entrepreneur in chemical and biological sciences, as well as a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation. He is the founding director of the Master of Design program at Universidad Catolica de Chile, and has the entrepreneurial skill to set up new companies based on fundamental research (such as the development of vaccine adjuvants for COVID vaccines).
San Martin is also the innovation director of Desert King International. He received his PhD in biotechnology from Imperial College London, and his master of science in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley.
Anibel Ferus-Comelo
Director, Labor Studies Program
Labor Center & Goldman Public Policy Program
Dr. Anibel Ferus-Comelo draws upon nearly 25 years of community-engaged research and teaching in her joint appointment at the Labor Center and the Goldman School of Public Policy. She directs the Labor Studies program at UC Berkeley through courses, internships, and collaborative research initiatives. In 2018, Dr. Ferus-Comelo was recognized as a Chancellor’s Public Scholar–Faculty Fellow for her design of service-learning internships and collaborative research projects with community partners involving graduate and undergraduate students.
Her research interests focus on labor standards and corporate social responsibility, gender, migration, the political economy of India, and the governance of global supply chains. She has supported the rights of low-wage, migrant workers in the US, the UK, and India within unions and community-based workers’ centers, and has been a consultant researcher and policy analyst for international agencies, including the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Dr. Ferus-Comelo began her teaching career at UCLA in Labor and Workplace Studies and Asian American Studies.
Since then, she has taught Sociology of India, Introduction to Gender Studies, International Development, and five modules of a joint union-university Certificate in Global Labor Studies. She has trained labor leaders through the Organizing Academy of the British Trades Union Congress and independent unions in India. Her co-edited book, Globalization, Education and Labor (Routledge, 2010), is an international anthology of labor initiatives to address the changing structure of employment and innovative organizing strategies through worker education. Her scholarship has been published as journal articles and book chapters for a mixed audience of academics and practitioners. Dr. Ferus-Comelo earned a Ph.D. in Economic Geography from Queen Mary, University of London, and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sociology.
Jorge Calderon
Lecturer, Haas School of Business
Jorge Calderon is a career entrepreneur, venture investment professional, management consultant, and innovation educator. Calderon is Managing Director for Impact Investments at Hispanics in Philanthropy, where he leads a fund that invests Latinx-led startups. Calderon previously founded Eddily, a skill-building and campus recruiting software platform for college students, and Impact Strategy Advisors (ISA), a boutique social venture and investment design consulting firm focused on helping capital sources and operating companies transform intentional social purpose into economic and positive impact value. Calderon is the author of the Startup Discovery Method and Purpose-Driven Design frameworks. He has been a professional faculty member at the Haas School of Business since 2014, where he has built the Impact Startup LaunchPad, Startup Disco, and Berkeley Impact Venture Partners (BIVP) curricula, and founded the Amp Impact Accelerator. He has also been a fellow within the Institute for Business and Social Impact, was part of the faculty team for the LAUNCH accelerator, and was the faculty director for the Global Social Venture Competition. He is actively involved with campus-based inclusive innovation programs.
Ronald Dahl
Director of the Institute of Human Development at UC Berkeley
Ronald E. Dahl is the Director of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as a Professor in the School of Public Health and the Joint Medical Program and runs the Adolescent Research Collaborative. He is the Founding Director of the Center for the Developing Adolescent, where he provides the strategic vision for the Center’s research agenda. He is a pediatrician and developmental scientist with long-standing research interests in the development of sleep/arousal regulation, affect regulation and the development of behavioral and emotional disorders in children and adolescents. His current work focuses on adolescence as a developmental period with unique opportunities for early intervention in relation to a wide range of behavioral and emotional health problems.
Colette Auerswald
Associate Professor, School of Public Health
Colette (Coco) is an Associate Professor in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and Director UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program. She holds academic positions at both the both the Berkeley and San Francisco campuses of the University of California. She is a pediatrician specialized in adolescent medicine. Her research consistently focuses on the social determinants of health of our society’s most disadvantaged youth and on structural interventions to positively impact on their health employing a community collaborative and youth-engaged approach. She is the co-founder and co-director of i4Y (Innovations for Youth) and the faculty lead for the Ending Youth Homelessness Catalyst Group.
Joe Dougherty
Professional Faculty, Berkeley Haas
Joe Dougherty is a Partner at Dalberg Advisors, a global social impact consultancy, and formerly served as the firm’s Managing Director for the Americas. He has been a trusted advisor to leading companies, foundations, non-profit organizations, and government agencies for twenty-five years and has worked in more than 30 countries. His work at Dalberg focuses on financial inclusion, agricultural productivity, and broad-based economic growth and his clients include the World Bank, USAID, the US Millennium Challenge Corporation, the City of San Francisco, New York City’s Economic Development Corporation, and the City of San Jose as well as leading companies including Facebook, Google, Intel, Visa Inc. and Bank of the West.
Before joining Dalberg, Joe worked with A.T. Kearney, Deloitte Emerging Markets, Citibank, Bank of Ireland, and the US FDIC’s Office of Capital Markets. Joe is member of the Professional Faculty at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where he teaches courses on Social Entrepreneurship and Leading Nonprofit Organizations. Joe holds an MA from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) as well as an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
Ken Goldberg
William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering, UC Berkeley; Professor, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
Ken has been interested in robots, rockets, and rebels since he was a kid. He’s skeptical about claims that humans are on the verge of being replaced by Superintelligent machines yet optimistic about the potential of technology to improve the human condition. Ken developed the first provably complete algorithm for part feeding and the first robot on the Internet. In 1995 he was awarded the Presidential Faculty Fellowship and in 2005 was elected IEEE Fellow: "For contributions to networked telerobotics and geometric algorithms for automation." Ken founded UC Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture public lecture series in 1997 serves on the Advisory Board of the RoboGlobal Exchange Traded Fund. Ken is Chief Scientist at Ambidextrous Robotics and on the Editorial Board of the journal Science Robotics. He served as Chair of the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department and co-founded the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering. Short documentary films he co-wrote were selected for Sundance and one was nominated for an Emmy Award. He lives in the Bay Area and is madly in love with his wife, filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain, and their two daughters.
Amy Gurowitz
Lecturer in Political Science
Amy Gurowitz teaches courses in international relations, international ethics, and immigration. Gurowitz co-runs the department’s honors program and is director of the American and International Studies Program. She is committed to and thoroughly enjoys undergraduate teaching and working with students. Gurowitz has published in a range of International relations journals and edited volumes. She holds a PhD from Cornell University and a BA from UC Berkeley
Laura Paxton Hassner
Lecturer, Management of Organizations at Berkeley Haas | Executive Director, Innovation & Entrepreneurship | Executive Director, Berkeley Changemaker
Laura Hassner is Executive Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley and also leads the Berkeley Changemaker. She helped to create and is a part of the core contributing faculty team for the Berkeley Changemaker gateway course. Her course, Berkeley Changemaker: Living with Agency, has been described by students as "my favorite and most valuable course". Previously, Laura was a Lecturer on Leadership at Berkeley Haas in the Executive MBA and Evening & Weekend MBA Programs. An expert in turnarounds, she is a former Big Five consultant and financial advisor. She has also taught in a highly-challenged urban school and spent a decade innovating new products and programs for a national nonprofit. She holds a BA, with honors, from Stanford University and an MBA, with honors, from Berkeley Haas.
Ron Hassner
Victoria Howell
Director, Executive Programs and Associate Instructor, UC Berkeley’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology
Victoria Howell leads the A. Richard Newton Lecture Series: A Berkeley Changemaker Course, the Center’s flagship program. Her background is in financial services, strategy and marketing, and she now dedicates herself to delivering opportunities/events connecting exceptional individuals to diverse audiences. Her work encourages learning and empowerment for aspiring innovators, entrepreneurs, career-minded professionals and seasoned executives. She holds a BA from University of Virginia and an MBA, from The Darden School of Business University of Virginia.
Kim Hazard
Teaching and Outreach Program Manager, Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry
Kimberly Hazard is a PhD student in Environmental Health Sciences. Her research focuses on exposures in early childhood environments. She is part of the instructional team for the Fall Greener Solutions graduate course, providing student teams with coaching on hazard assessment. She also supports other BCGC interns and conducts outreach for BCGC’s Greener Partnerships program.
Ché Abram
Chief of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health
Abram has 20 years of experience in higher education with a commitment to community engagement. She considers herself a culture shifter by moving race and equity initiatives forward, a transformational leader by centering the needs of her partners in decision-making, and a changemaker as a longtime advocate for K-12 BIPOC students in the Oakland Unified School District. She brings the lens of intersectional identities and restorative practices to her work, engaging people at all levels of the university in race and equity initiatives.
Abram’s career began in higher education admission and recruitment. Most recently, she held the role of Associate Director of Diversity at Samuel Merritt University (SMU). In that role, she focused on implementing systemwide diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies, providing impactful programming to address the social and structural determinants of health, and retaining and promoting BIPOC identities.
Nassirah Nelson
Human Centered Design Research + IEOR at Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership
Nassirah Nelson is a multidisciplinary designer and STEM educator whose research explores ways to recontextualize and teach STEM science through the arts, specifically music production and creative music technologies. Her class Sample Mode offers students the space to explore and develop their STEM identities through the art of sampling, music production, design thinking and digital fabrication.
Gail Gannon
Founding Director, NeuroTech Collider Lab
Gail Christine Gannon is the CEO of Ensanté, a social enterprise with 20+ years of experience helping entrepreneurs turn their great idea into market success, and Director of Neurotech Collider Lab at UC Berkeley. She guides entrepreneurs through identifying target markets, finding grants and persuading investors, prototyping and refining their product or service, defining the business model, securing their first customers, and growing into new markets or partnerships. She has been instrumental in helping companies build to scale and to successful acquisition. Her most recent ventures include business coaching on behalf of the World Bank for the Republic of Georgia, helping startups establish commercial partnerships for ex-US companies. Previously, she worked with government and NGOs (e.g. PATH for the Gates Foundation), allocating health investment dollars to the most promising innovations. Gail has worked with entrepreneurs from across Asia, Europe, Africa and America on a wide range of products and services. Gail earned her master’s degree from the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health, a Patricia Roberts Harris Fellow. She also holds a Certificate of Honor in Biotechnology from University of California, Santa Cruz, an AB with honors from University of California, Berkeley. She mentors entrepreneurs through Stanford University’s SPARK and University of California-San Francisco’s Lean Launchpad, and other government and NGO innovation institutes, (Start Up Grind).
Glynda A. Hull
Elizabeth H. and Eugene A. Shurtleff Chair in Undergraduate Education
Glynda Hull holds the Elizabeth H. and Eugene A. Shurtleff Chair in Undergraduate Education. A recipient of UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award, Hull offers undergraduate, graduate, and teacher education courses on literacy and media, and her research focuses on improving K-12 education with a focus on literacy, language, and technology.
Hull has published more than 100 articles, chapters, and books on topics ranging from the teaching of writing; digital technologies and their uses in schools; adult literacy and the changing contexts and requirements for work; and community, school, and university partnerships. This research has been supported by grants from the U.S. government and private foundations. Her books include Changing Work, Changing Workers: Critical Perspectives on Language, Literacy, and Skill; The New Work Order: Education and Literacy in the New Capitalism; and School’s Out! Bridging Out-of-School Literacies with Classroom Practice.
In California, with support from the U.S. Department of Education and other agencies, Hull has created and studied after school programs for K-12 youth that emphasize digital media. Internationally, she has carried out research in India to study how schooling for girls might be transformed. She has recently worked with educators and researchers in several countries, including Norway, South Africa, and India to create and study an international social networking project for youth. Her current research focuses on designing innovative online spaces for learning and exploring the burgeoning phenomenon of global schools.
Bob Jacobsen
Professor of Physics
Bob obtained a B.S.E.E. from MIT in 1978. He spent 1976 through 1986 working in the computer and data communications industry for a small company that was successively bought out by larger and larger companies. He left in 1986 to return to graduate school in physics, obtaining his Ph.D. in experimental high energy physics from Stanford in 1991. From 1991 through 1994, he was a Scientific Associate and Scientific Staff Member at CERN, the European Laboratory for Nuclear Physics, in Geneva Switzerland. While there, he was a member of the ALEPH collaboration concentrating on B physics and on the energy calibration of the LEP collider. He joined the faculty at Berkeley in 1995. He is the former Dean of Undergraduate Studies, College of Letters and Science.
Sarah Klass
Postdoctoral Fellow, Keasling Lab
Sarah Klass, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow in the Keasling Lab at UC Berkeley and the Joint Bioenergy Institute. Additionally, she serves as a lecturer for the Alt: Meat Challenge Course through the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology at UC Berkeley. With a chemistry and chemical biology background, her focus has been on chemically and genetically modifying natural protein structures for advanced material and biological functions. During her Ph.D. in the Francis lab at UC Berkeley, Sarah studied the impact of sequence modification on intrinsically disordered proteins’ self-assembling properties to develop a new class of bioderived and biodegradable protein-based materials with unique functions. In the Keasling Lab, Sarah works on engineering polyketide synthetases (PKSs) in bacterial hosts to bio-manufacture small molecule monomers that can be polymerized into recyclable 3D plastics. Additionally, she has worked to genetically engineer Aspergillus oryzae, the filamentous fungi associated with the production of sake and miso, to produce novel compounds and enzymes with applications in food and waste upcycling.
Amy E. Lerman
Michelle Schwartz Endowed Professor of Public Policy and Political Science and Director, Possibility Lab
Professor Amy E. Lerman, Director of the Possibility Lab at UC Berkeley, is a political scientist who studies issues of race, public opinion, and political behavior, especially as they relate to punishment and social inequality in America. She is the author of two books on the American criminal justice system—The Modern Prison Paradox and Arresting Citizenship (awarded abest book award from the Urban Politics Section of the American Political Science Association). Her most recent book, Good Enough for Government Work (awarded both the Woodrow Wilson Award and the Gladys Kammerer Award from the American Political Science Association) examines how perceptions of government shape citizens’ attitudes toward privatization.
In addition to her academic work, Lerman served as a speechwriter and communications consultant for national nonprofits and members of the United States Congress, a community organizer in Latin America and Southeast Asia, and an adjunct faculty member of the Prison University Project at San Quentin State Prison. She consults widely on issues related to prison reform, violence reduction, access to higher education, and law enforcement mental health.
Bree Rosenblum
Professor, Global Change Biology
Bree Rosenblum is a Professor of Global Change Biology at UC Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. She received her B.A. from Brown University and her PhD from UC Berkeley. Bree’s research focuses on understanding the biological diversity of our planet. Her research crosses scales from genes to ecosystems, and takes place from the White Sands desert in New Mexico where new lizard species are evolving, to the rainforests of South America where amphibians are threatened with extinction. Bree has published 90 scholarly articles and the first ever Global Change Biology textbook (with Oxford University Press). Her work has been recognized by numerous awards and has been featured in many textbooks and popular press venues (New York Times, the Discovery Channel, Public Radio, Ranger Rick).
Jennifer Johnson-Hanks
Executive Dean of the College of Letters & Sciences and Professor of Demography and Sociology
Please click here for more information about Dean Johnson-Hanks.
Terry D. Johnson
Teaching Professor, Department of Bioengineering
Terry D. Johnson has a master's degree in chemical engineering from MIT and is currently a Teaching Professor in the bioengineering department at UC Berkeley, giving students the tools that they will need to repair him as he gets (even) older.
He teaches courses in a wide range of subjects, displaying a versatility that has prevented him from achieving any actual expertise. In 2010 he received the Golden Apple Award for Outstanding Teaching, and was one of the recipients of Berkeley's 2013 Distinguished Teaching Awards. Terry is also co-author of the popular science book How to Defeat Your Own Clone (and other tips for surviving the biotech revolution.
When he is not generating PowerPoint slides, he can be found giving talks and panels at events like The Bad Ad Hoc Hypothesis Festival, Nerd Nite, Eureka! Science Comedy, Wondercon, and Silicon Valley Comic-con.
Rich Lyons
Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer
Rich Lyons serves as the chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer for UC Berkeley. He served as dean of Berkeley's Haas School of Business (2008 to 2018) and currently holds the William and Janet Cronk Chair in Innovative Leadership. From 2006 to 2008 he oversaw Goldman Sachs University as chief learning officer. He received his BS with highest honors from UC Berkeley (business) and PhD from MIT (economics). Before (re)joining Berkeley, Rich was for six years on the business faculty at Columbia University. His research and teaching expertise is in international economics and finance and his top applied interest is the “how and why” of setting strong institutional cultures.
Michael Lu
MD, MS, MPH, Dean of the School of Public Health
Michael C. Lu, the current Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, has a deep-rooted passion for health equity and social justice. He has dedicated his research to the development, testing and translation of a new theory on the origins of maternal and child health disparities.
John Levine
Lecturer, College Writing Programs
John Levine joined the UC Berkeley College Writing Programs faculty in 1997. In 2005, he co-developed the course design and began teaching Introduction to Public Speaking and, later, Advanced Public Speaking. He also coordinates the long-running Berkeley Write
rs at Work series. As a Teacher-Consultant for the Bay Area Writing Project, he has led a number of workshops and seminars for educators. Before becoming a teacher, he worked in radio and television. An actor and award-winning playwright, John has had plays produced throughout the US, as well as internationally, in, among other places, Canada, India, Australia, the UAE, the Philippines, and the UK. He received his BA in English and Black Studies from Oberlin College and his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.
Dania Matos
Vice Chancellor for Equity & Inclusion
Dania Matos began her tenure as the 4th Vice Chancellor for the Division of Equity & Inclusion (VCEI) at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2021. Prior to coming to Berkeley, she was the inaugural associate chancellor and chief diversity officer at the University of California, Merced.
Dania is a member of Chancellor Carol Christ's Cabinet, advising and guiding the campus on diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice (DEIBJ). She is the co-chair of the Hispanic Serving Task Force(link is external), oversees the African American Initiative, and is the executive sponsor of multiple identity-based standing committees. Dania leads with vision and love, centering people and community first and creating change through collective wisdom.
This year, Dania was awarded the Top DEI Advocate by the National Diversity Council. In 2020, she was selected as a Leadership Academy Fellow by the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, and in 2018, she was named one of the Top 25 Women in Higher Education by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education Magazine.
Over the past decade, Dania has led equity and inclusion work in the private, nonprofit, and government sectors. She was the inaugural deputy chief diversity officer at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and served in Virginia’s public defender’s office.
Dania holds a J.D. from the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, and a BA from Brown University.
Oliver O'Reilly
Vice Provost, Undergraduate Education
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Associate Dean for Graduate Education in the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society
Oliver M. O’Reilly is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. He received his B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG). Subsequently, he received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University. At Cornell, he studied under Phil Holmes and Frank Moon. After spending two years as a postdoc at the Institut für Mechanik at ETH-Zürich under Jürg Dual, he joined the faculty in Mechanical Engineering at Cal.
His interests span the fields of continuum mechanics and nonlinear dynamics. He has a broad range of specializations including directed (or Cosserat) theories of deformable bodies, constrained rigid body dynamics, contact mechanics, linear and nonlinear vibrations and linear and nonlinear dynamics of deformable bodies. He has applied these interests to a range of applications including soft robots, MEMS resonators, brake squeal, the dynamics of toys, motorcycle navigation, axially moving media, artificial and natural satellites, spinal kinematics and vehicle collision dynamics. O’Reilly has coauthored over 80 archival journal articles, written two textbooks and is a co-inventor on two patents. He has also received multiple teaching awards including U.C. Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1999, the Pi-Tau-Sigma Professor of the Year Award in 2003 and the Tau-Beta-Pi Outstanding Faculty of the Year Award in 2013. He is a 2021 recipient of the Berkeley Faculty Service Award.
Professor O’Reilly currently serves as a contributing editor for the journal Nonlinear Dynamics and is on the editorial boards of the following journals: Nonlinearity, International Journal of Nonlinear Mechanics, Regular and Chaotic Dynamics, and Nonlinear Dynamics and Mobile Robots.
Saul Perlmutter
Nobel Prize Winner (2011)
Professor of Physics
Saul Perlmutter is a 2011 Nobel Laureate, sharing the prize in physics for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. A professor of physics at UC Berkeley and a senior scientist at Berkeley Lab, he leads the Berkeley Institute for Data Science, the Supernova Cosmology Project, and Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics. His interest in scientific-style critical thinking led to the development of interdisciplinary courses at Cal called Sense and Sensibility and Science and Physics & Music, which he has been teaching to undergraduates for more than a decade. An author of hundreds of articles on cosmology, Professor Perlmutter has also written popular articles and appeared in numerous PBS, Discovery Channel, and BBC documentaries. In addition to other awards and honorary doctorates, he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Christyna Serrano
Lecturer, Education
Dr. Christyna Serrano received her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Berkeley. (Go Bears!) She has over ten years of teaching, curriculum, and program design experience. Christyna has collaborated with, developed, and managed faculty, technical experts, thought leaders, and content partners to produce dynamic, interactive, and transformative learning experiences and educational solutions (in-person and online) -- most recently as Director, Faculty Engagement at Singularity University, and now as Strategic Content Partner Lead at Udacity. Christyna is also a 2021 nominee for the American Cultures Excellence in Teaching Award for her course, Critical Studies in Education. Christyna will be co-teaching an EdTech & Entrepreneurship course as part of Sutardja’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology Challenge Lab in the School of Engineering.
Nichole Lewis
Biology Education Researcher
Nichole earned her PhD in Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from UC Davis in 2022 studying mutations in histone proteins specific to childhood brain cancer. To complement her bench science background, she has extensive experience in education instruction, course design, communicating science to the public and outreach. After graduation she pivoted into science education and is now a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley working as a Discovery Education Specialist on the Integrative Biology Departmental Berkeley Discovery Innovation Award, Discovery for All: Empowering Inclusive Communities. During her postdoc Nichole has worked with faculty to make discovery-based learning changes to their teaching and is part of one of the instructional teams that was awarded the Presidential Chair Fellows Grant for 2023-2025. Student success and joy in learning are at the core of how Nichole approaches instructional design and aims for every student to feel welcome in her class and have the space to explore what they love about science.
Catherine Koshland
Professor, Engineering, Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health, and & Energy and Resources Group and Former Interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost (EVCP)
Catherine P. Koshland is the University of California Berkeley's former interim executive vice chancellor and provost (EVCP), Wood-Calvert Professor in the College of Engineering, professor of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health, and a professor in the Energy and Resources Group. Her research interests include air pollution; the health impacts of nanoparticles; energy, technology, and social and cultural impacts; and environmental health regulation and policy. From 2004 to 2014, Cathy served as UC Berkeley’s vice provost for academic planning and facilities, a role that was expanded in 2009 to include teaching and learning. In 2015, she became vice chancellor for undergraduate education and held that role through June 2021.
Anita Balaraman
Lecturer at the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership
Anita is a technology product leader with more than 10 years of experience in building technology products that delight the customer both in the B2B and B2C domain. She is also an adjunct faculty at UC Berkeley, teaching and coaching hi-tech product management. She is currently the founder of an early stage ed-tech startup. Most recently she led the digital customer experience practice at Cisco Systems, designing and launching enterprise solutions for customer experience. Prior to that, she led the product team at WalmartLabs launching products that combine machine learning, predictive analytics and personalization. She consults independently and on the board of technology startups in the advertising, ecommerce, and ed-tech space. Anita received her MS in toxicology and applied statistics, and an MBA, both from the University of California, Berkeley.
Jasper Rine
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Genetics and Development
http://mcb.berkeley.edu/faculty/GEN/rinej.html Please see Professor Rine's homepage for more information
Will Rosenzweig
Faculty Director, Sustainable Food Initiative at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley
Will recently retired as managing partner of Physic Ventures, the first venture capital firm dedicated to investing in health, well-being and sustainable living. Over the past 30 years, he has been involved in leading and growing more than 30 entrepreneurial ventures. 2020 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Republic of Tea, where Will was founding CEO and Minister of Progress and was co-author of the bestselling The Republic of Tea: How an Idea Becomes a Business (Doubleday), which was named one of the 100 best business books of all time. Will has served on the faculty at the Haas School at UC Berkeley for twenty years and was the Founding Dean of the Food Business School at the Culinary Institute of America. In 2010, Will was honored with the Oslo Business for Peace Award, "the highest distinction given to a businessperson for outstanding accomplishments in the area of ethical business." Will also serves on the boards of Enso Village, The Teaching Kitchen Collaborative, and Wholesome Crave.
Ryan Sloan
College Writing Programs and Haas School of Business
Ryan Sloan is on the faculty in U.C. Berkeley's College Writing Programs and the Haas School of Business. In addition, Ryan's interest in faculty and peer development has led to roles as co-facilitator for the Center for Teaching & Learning’s Lecturer Teaching Fellows Program; coordinator for the U.C. Berkeley Summer Creative Writing Program; co-founder of the College Writing Research Festival and the Haas Summer PreCore Program; and a developer of new courses for the Koshland Fellows Summer Institute and the Berkeley Changemaker® series.
Ryan is one of the co-hosts of the long-running Babylon Salon quarterly reading series in San Francisco. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, his work has appeared in LA Weekly, Joyland Magazine, Opium Magazine, The Modern Spectator and Painted Bride Quarterly, among other publications. Residencies include the 2019 Lit Camp Writers’ Conference, the 2019 Arctic Circle Residency on the Summer Solstice Expedition and the 2021 Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference.
Mariana Somma
Lecturer, Innovation and Design
As a design thinking coach, facilitator, practitioner, and educator, Mariana teaches organizations and individuals how to take a human-centered approach to solving problems. Mariana is passionate about helping students and entrepreneurs apply design thinking methodologies to solve problems, generate ideas and build a foundation that will help teams flourish. She currently co-facilitates Design Thinking and Innovation graduate and undergraduate courses for the Haas School of Business and coaches workshops for international corporations and higher education institutions. Mariana also works as a senior partner at Employera, where she collaborates with clients to increase engagement and create more meaningful candidate and employee experiences. A fluent Spanish-speaker, Mariana recently worked with PSI in Nicaragua to develop a youth-friendly clinic model to deliver quality health services to young mothers.
Carrie Requist
Adjunct Faculty, UC Berkeley College of Engineering
Carrie Requist is an entrepreneur who has worked at both startups and large corporates as well as an educator who has taught at UC Berkeley and Penn State University. Carrie was co-founder and CEO of U Grok It, which was acquired in April ’17 after raising two rounds of financing. She is co-creator of a US patent in RFID technology. Carrie is passionate about educating and supporting entrepreneurs. She is the mother of three adult children, and an optimist who spends her free time kayaking, skiing, and traveling. She received her MBA from the Penn State University in 2011 and her BA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987.
Mathieu Aguesse
Lecturer, Haas School of Business
Mathieu Aguesse is a French entrepreneur, dedicated to innovation and education on impact-driven topics. He successfully launched the first open innovation class dedicated to solving plastic pollution, a program called Deplastify the Planet. At Haas, he is now running a class at called Equitable Design, which leverages the power of design to solve challenges related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Aguesse is also the founder and CEO of Schoolab US, an innovation studio working with major corporations across the world. He has been developing unique innovation and design frameworks, such as “design fiction,” which he sees as the new essential framework for the leaders of the future.
Ula Taylor
Professor & H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Department Chair
Ula Taylor earned her doctorate in American History from UC Santa Barbara. She is the author of The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam, The Veiled Garvey: The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey, co-author of Panther: A Pictorial History of the Black Panther Party and The Story Behind the Film and co-editor of Black California Dreamin: The Crisis of California African American Communities.
Her articles on African American Women’s History and feminist theory have appeared in the Journal of African American History, Journal of Women’s History, Feminist Studies, SOULS, and other academic journals and edited volumes. In 2013 she received the Distinguished Professor Teaching Award for the University of California, Berkeley. Only 5% of the academic senate faculty receive this honor and she is the second African American woman in the history of the University to receive this award.
Brandi M. Pearce
Lecturer, Director, High Impact Teams & Research, Team@Haas, Management of Organizations
Brandi Pearce is on the faculty in Management of Organizations and the Faculty Director of Teams@Haas. Prior to earning her doctorate, Pearce worked in the Silicon Valley leading alliance teams for Oracle Corporation, one of the world’s most innovative global organizations in the management of strategic partnerships. She deeply values the intersection between evidence-based management and organizational practice. These principals spill over into her research where she works directly with teams, individual contributors, and executives in Global Fortune 500 organizations all over the world to explore how collaborative dynamics drive creativity, employee engagement, and innovation. It is her hope that students will leave Haas feeling inspired and confident about their potential to lead teams and create value for their future organizations. Colleagues and students describe Pearce as “collaborative and approachable” as well as “curious and passionate.” She aims to be a student always and admires those who can lead with and through others.
Steven Weber
Professor of Political Science and I-School
Steven Weber is a specialist in International Relations and Interntional Political Economy with expertise in international and national security; the impact of technology on national systems of innovation, defense, and deterrence; and the political economy of knowledge-intensive industries particularly software and pharmaceuticals
Lisa Wymore
Professor
Lisa Wymore is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. She teaches classes in choreography, dance technique, pedagogy, improvisation, collaborative innovation, and performance. Professor Wymore is Co-Artistic Director of Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts with Sheldon B. Smith. The company creates multimedia dance theater works and experimental performances. Their work has been presented and hosted by numerous national and international festivals including the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art Summer Solstice Celebration, Dance Chicago, the Performing Arts Chicago PAC/edge Festival, the Dublin Fringe Festival, the Minneapolis Spark Festival, the Earagail Arts Festival in Donegal, Ireland, the [Kon.[Text]] Symposium in Zurich, Switzerland, the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) in Amsterdam, the MOCO International Conference on Movement and Computing at Goldsmiths University, London.
Professor Wymore started a multi-disciplinary project called The Resonance Project in 2005, which has evolved into the Z-Lab UC Berkeley – a site for interactive real-time collaboration. This project involves choreographers, computer engineers, and visual/sound artists who are investigating presence/co-presence and corporeal and code interactivity within live and media based performance. Wymore is a Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst from the Integrated Movement Studies program. She regularly teaches workshops and classes in this system. She is one of the Co-Founders of the Townsend Center Dance Studies Working Group. For the past several years she has been honored to be an organizer of Indigenous Peoples’ Day Celebration in the Bancroft Studio – a daylong series of events, performances, talks, and participatory activities honoring California Native Americans and indigenous peoples from around the world.
Shaun Carver
Executive Director of International House
Shaun Carver served as Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs in the Rady School of Management, UC San Diego (2017-2020), and as Executive Director of the Hult International Business School (Boston, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai; 2013-2017), where he oversaw 750 students representing 82 countries. Before that, he served in leadership positions in institutions of international higher education in China (2002-2013) at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, Tsinghua University, and the Sino-British College of the University of Shanghai Science and Technology (USST).
Jay Stowsky
Berkeley Changemaker Programs Lead
Jay Stowsky is a senior academic administrator at UC Berkeley, currently serving as part of the leadership team for the Berkeley Changemaker program. From 2008 to 2021, he was the Senior Assistant Dean for Instruction at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business; earlier, he served 5 years as the School's dean for strategic initiatives and school affairs. Dr. Stowsky has held several senior positions at UC Berkeley and has taught courses on public sector management, high tech regions, and science policy. During the Clinton Administration, Jay served as a senior staff economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers, focusing on technology policy.
David Porter
Former Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, Berkeley Haas
David Porter is the former Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. He is a talented and experienced leader in the higher education and media industries, having designed and implemented multiple diversity and leadership development programs in both. He was previously the Executive Director and CEO of the Walter Kaitz Foundation, which is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to providing women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community opportunities in the cable, media, and entertainment industries. In this role, he provided strategic advice to the Board of Directors of the NCTA: The Internet and Television Association on industry’s diversity and inclusion efforts.
Dr. Porter holds five college degrees: a PhD in organizational behavior and a Masters Degree in Sociology from Harvard; as well as a Masters Degree in Industrial Engineering, a Masters Degree in Sociology, and a Bachelors Degree in Industrial Engineering, all from Stanford University.
Dr. Porter is now executive vice president and chief strategy and people officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.