We are excited to introduce our new Alumni Advisory Board! The board draws on the expertise of our PhD alumni working beyond the academy to inform the development of our career diversity programming. It also provides the department with a unique opportunity to explore how to build relationships between our alumni and current graduate students, as well as supporting networks within our alumni community.
David M. Johnson (PhD '07) serves as the Vice President of Instruction at Merritt College in Oakland, CA. In this position, he is responsible for the enrollment management, academic compliance, budget supervision, and overall instructional support for nearly one hundred degree, transfer, and certificate programs. He also works closely with the faculty, staff, and administration to ensure that the institution meets accreditation standards and is aligned with state initiatives. Prior to assuming this post, David spent eight years in administrative roles at Cañada College in Redwood City, CA and Las Positas College in Livermore, CA. As the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences he provided responsive and transparent leadership to foster a culture of partnership and open communication with faculty, staff, and students. He also directed educational outreach through the ESL Community Based English Tutoring program, the Adult-Education College and Career Educational Leadership (ACCEL) Coalition, and dual-enrollment partnerships with local school districts. While serving as Vice President at both Cañada and Las Positas, he took the lead in identifying and supporting professional development opportunities for faculty and staff to stimulate and reinforce excellence in pedagogy and student achievement. He also worked closely with the district office, faculty, and staff to plan and implement capital projects and structural upgrades.
Andrew Keating received his PhD from Berkeley in 2011. He now works as Managing Director for Healthcare and Education at Box, where he is responsible for go-to-market strategy and execution for these industry verticals, including marketing, sales, product, and post-sales activities. In addition to driving individual engagements with strategic accounts, his role involves building a customer-centric community by connecting the dots within Box and externally between and among customers and partners. Deeply knowledgeable about enterprise IT, organizational change management, and security and compliance requirements in complex environments, he previously led the cloud services program at Internet2, a group of 300+ major universities. In that role he was responsible for developing the research and education community's engagement and partnership with numerous technology companies.
Erica Lee graduated from Berkeley in 2017. As a graduate student, she worked with several groups that reconsidered PhD career paths, including Beyond Academia, UC Humanists @ Work, and the Berkeley NEH Next Generation PhD grant committee. She now works as a Presidential Management Fellow, a program that hires recent postsecondary graduates into the federal civil service.
Karen McNeill received her PhD in US History from Berkeley in 2006. She has spent the past dozen years documenting and bringing stories to life on the page, in the classroom, at the podium, and with families and small businesses. Through her scholarship on Julia Morgan as a graduate student, Karen developed an expertise in understanding how women have used their financial, social, cultural, and intellectual capital to create a lasting impact on their local, state, national, and even international communities. And through her work in historic preservation, Karen developed a passion for the application of history to real-world situations. As director of family history at Ascent Private Capital Management of U.S. Bank, Karen has been tying these strands together and building a unique program within wealth management. She works with families of significant wealth, helping them capture, share, and explore the significance of their family histories and wealth creation stories – tools that help families develop and define a shared sense of identity, values, and purpose as they assume the enormous responsibility of wealth. Some day Karen will finish her book on Julia Morgan – hopefully before her kids graduate from college (which gives her 13 more years). In the meantime, she is frequently invited to present on the subject and continues to publish or provide subject matter expertise in a variety of forums.
Beatrice Schraa is a PhD candidate in Modern Chinese History at Berkeley with a specialty in the history of Beijing in the 1920s and 1930s. She works as an Associate Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on the Philanthropic Partnerships team, whose mission is to encourage and enable more intentional giving globally. Previously, she was a Director at Asia Society in New York City, where she oversaw the individual giving program. At UC Berkeley, she taught courses on Japanese, Ancient Chinese, and Modern Chinese History to undergraduates. Beatrice began her career as the Editorial Assistant for sociology textbooks at Routledge Books. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley, Pomona College, and Tsinghua University's IUP Program. She speaks fluent French, advanced Chinese, and intermediate Japanese.
Philip E. Wolgin graduated from Berkeley in 2011. He is the Managing Director for Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress (CAP). At CAP, he helps to set overall strategy and direction on immigration and refugee research and advocacy, and lead's the team's work on a diverse set of issues, such as immigration reform, asylum and family separation, border security and interior enforcement, and more. He has held the titles of Policy Analyst, Senior Policy Analyst, and Associate Director, all on the CAP Immigration team. In addition to his, Philip sits on the national Board of Directors of the international refugee agency HIAS. He holds a B.A. from New York University, and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Follow him on Twitter @pwolgin.