Berkeley Voices

Billy Curtis, the director of the Gender Equity Resource Center at UC Berkeley, has spent the past two decades working to build a more inclusive campus for the LGBTQ community. This year, he was named a grand marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration, an honor given to people and organizations for their work and advocacy in helping strengthen LGBTQ communities in the Bay Area. “I see this as an opportunity for us as a university to highlight our past, present and continued support of the LGBTQ community,” he said. “We’re getting honored, but let’s recommit to serving the LGBTQ+ community and any emerging un-yet-named marginalized sexualities and genders.”

Read the story on UC Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/06/14/podcast-geneq-leader-billy-curtis-grand-marshal-sf-pride/

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Inside of Joshua Ahazie’s mind live hundreds of songs. Since he was a kid, he would hear a melody and then he would hear all the parts — the vocals, how to play it on the piano. How it all went together. "I really thought I was going crazy." But he soon realized it was a gift. It's this gift of seeing how different pieces can go together to create a whole, he says, that has helped his succeed as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business — he's graduating Monday, May 14 at the Hearst Greek Theatre — and has given him the vision to launch his social enterprise, Atide.

See photos and read the story on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/05/10/grad-profile-joshua-ahazie-podcast/

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When Marcy Whitebook worked as a childcare teacher in the 1970s, she made less than $2 an hour. She was amazed at how little she made for the hard and important work she did with infants and toddlers. So Whitebook, with a group of teacher-activists, launched a national campaign in 1992 called Worthy Wage Day. The day of action, held every year on May 1, aims to raise awareness of the low wages earned by early childhood educators and draw attention to the chronic underfunding of public education. In this podcast episode, Whitebook, now the director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, talks about how she and her team used faxes and mimeographs to get Worthy Wage Day to go viral.

Read the story and see photos on UC Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/05/01/worthy-wage-day/

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There are more than 5 million species of fungi, and each one likes a particular food. Some like sawdust. Others like plastic. Some can even digest heavy metals. After the fungi eat their meal, what was once waste turns into a new, natural and compostable material that can just be left to decompose or be used in all sorts of practical ways, from cleaning up oil spills to fashioning faux leather handbags to building houses. Sonia Travaglini, a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, tells us all about it.

Read the story on UC Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/03/29/what-cant-mushrooms-do/

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When Derrika Hunt was in third grade, she didn't stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. She remembers telling her mom, "This doesn't feel right to me. Why am I saying this pledge and then going home every day to my community, seeing people suffering, seeing people marginalized?" Now, a Ph.D. candidate in education at UC Berkeley, Derrika takes teenage girls of color around the world through her nonprofit, Dreamers4Change Foundation. It's a way for them, all of whom are from economically disadvantaged communities, to see that another world exists and realize that change is possible.

Read the story on UC Berkeley News: http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/03/12/podcast-interview-w-grad-student-derrika-hunt/

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