Social Impact

For more than six decades, the Berkeley Psychology Clinic has trained doctoral students for careers in mental health by supervising them during therapy for the East Bay community at large as well as UC Berkeley students.

Over time, the clinic’s mission has become even more important as treatment costs have risen and access to care has remained uneven. Today, it continues to provide mental health services for adults, children and students at affordable rates, who often lack reliable insurance coverage to seek private therapy.

The...

Henry Sohn didn’t know what he wanted to do in college. At first, he was considering medical school, but an eye-opening hospital experience and a serendipitous internship at Apple altered the course of his life. Taking two breaks from UC Berkeley, Sohn ultimately completed his bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1992.

It was a good time to enter the Bay Area’s tech scene. Sohn leveraged his Apple internship into jobs at...

As a postdoctoral physics researcher, Elizabeth Dresselhaus had found many excellent networking groups for young women scientists — but she longed for a structured environment to learn professional skills and strategies. So, when she received an email about joining UC Berkeley’s Shining Lights Program’s first cohort, she thought it was the perfect opportunity. The semester-long leadership development fellowship aims to help more...

Tierra Smiley Evans travels to some of the world’s most remote forests to protect its largest inhabitants from microscopic threats. Her work involves caring for mountain gorillas and Asian elephants while examining mosquitos and humans for deadly diseases.

Smiley Evans holds both a Ph.D. in infectious disease epidemiology and a doctorate of veterinary medicine. This background gives her a unique perspective on emerging...