Alumni

L&S alumnus, Wally Adeyemo, delivers keynote address at Berkeley's commencement

May 19, 2021

Wally Adeyemo speaks at graduation 2021In this episode of Berkeley Talks, Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and UC Berkeley alumnus, delivers the keynote address at Berkeley’s commencement on Saturday, May 15.

“The Berkeley community is made up of people that show up in all the places where decisions and history tend...

A Conversation with Gene Yang '95, L&S Alumnus & Award-Winning Cartoonist

May 5, 2021

On the evening of March 16, 2021, a man opened fire in three Atlanta-area businesses and killed eight people, six of whom were of Asian descent. In response to those tragic shootings, “#StopAsianHate” and “#AsiansAreHumansToo” became all too familiar refrains as thousands across the country protested the rising tide of anti-Asian bias and violence. Gene Luen Yang, a renowned cartoonist, turned to his pen and paper and used the medium of comics to channel his own thoughts and emotions.

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Commencement speaker and L&S alumnus, Wally Adeyemo, followed a remarkable road to leadership

April 15, 2021

On a solemn late-summer afternoon in 2001, just a few days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, UC Berkeley student body president Wally Adeyemo stood with campus leaders on the steps of Doe Library and offered consolation and hope to the grief-stricken campus community.

Jenny Kwon, his friend since the early days of their freshman year, was among the 12,000 people on Memorial Glade that day, listening to insights that Adeyemo had drawn from the Bible and from history, and to his eloquent appealthat they should rise above anger and the desire for retribution.

“It was just...

Interview with Michael Quigley '80

Michael Quigley ’80 joined the Charter Hill Society in 2014 and is the Honorary Chair for South Korea. We asked him about his path at Cal and about how the events of 2020 have affected his work at Kim & Chang, one of the world’s top 100 law firms. You graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in economics before receiving a juris doctorate from Pepperdine. How has your Berkeley education served you in your professional path and more broadly?

I arrived at Cal from Orange, California in 1975 as a rough stone. To this day I am certain that my...

From L&S to the White House

February 16, 2021

Among the Berkeley experts who have been appointed to the Biden administration, we are proud to say that six are alumni from the College of Letters & Science. They majored in fields including political science, history, Latin American Studies, mathematics, French, and economics, and from these varied starting points, they each blazed a trail to national service.

Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of...

Scott McDonald Offers a Chance to Do More Than Research

February 4, 2021

Berkeley alum Scott McDonald believes in workplace diversity, and he’s put time, effort, and money behind that conviction. A ’73 sociology grad, Scott has had a long and successful career in advertising at leading global media companies like Time Warner and Conde Nast. Currently the CEO and President of the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), he and his colleagues recently established a charitable foundation – the ARF Workforce Initiative for Diversity and Excellence (ARF WIDE) – to improve workforce quality and diversity in the advertising, media, and research-analytics...

Investment transforms life sciences and business ecosystem

January 20, 2021

With a visionary investment connecting life sciences to entrepreneurship, Mark and Stephanie Robinson are fast tracking innovation at UC Berkeley. The Robinsons have given a total of $10 million to support bio-entrepreneurship at Berkeley, creating resources for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty that leverage our university’s edge in basic science research while preparing the next generation of business leaders. The Robinsons recently provided generous gifts to sustain a program for enterprising undergraduates to build skills that will make them equally comfortable in...