“The difference in communities that have what they needed and communities that didn’t was that it all depended on who was in the room when key decisions were being made. I wanted the skills and a degree that would put me in those rooms.” Community leader and UC Berkeley alum Fred Blackwell (Master of City Planning ’96) grew up in Oakland in the 1970s, shaped at home by parents who were activists and at a school founded by Black Panthers. He was often “the little kid in the back of the community room,” absorbing early lessons about service, justice and opportunity. Blackwell went on to get a degree in urban studies at Morehouse College, sparking a career in policy and advocacy. His first job was at the Children’s Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., before returning home to Oakland to work with Children Now and his mother’s nonprofit, Urban Strategies Council. Berkeley came next. “It was home. It was the number-one planning program in the country,” he says. While earning his degree, he ...