# @ucberkeleyofficial on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DbY0RBsGjss
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/68409039-ucberkeleyofficial-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/b0225750b9.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-07-29T19:00:01.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** UC Berkeley (@ucberkeleyofficial) — https://gondola.cc/ucberkeleyofficial

## Caption

“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 worked nearly full-time and also became a father. His son was born just weeks before grad school began: “It was a blur.”

A moment of clarity came in a race and class colloquium that introduced students to practitioners doing equity work. When San Francisco Foundation’s Joe Brooks visited the class, Blackwell was inspired, eventually joining the foundation as an intern. “He had done a lot of the things that I aspired to do with my career,” Blackwell says. “That was my first exposure to philanthropy.”

After a 30-year career in government, advocacy, and philanthropy, Blackwell is now CEO of San Francisco Foundation, a community foundation stewarding a $1 billion endowment to advance racial equity and economic inclusion. One example is the Stand Together Bay Area Fund, which provides cash assistance, housing support and food access to families impacted by deportation. “It’s been full circle,” he says. 

His message for the next generation? “Democracy relies on citizens. Not just our rights, but our responsibility to make sure everyone gets to enjoy them.”

#UCBerkeley #CalAlumStory

“The difference in communities that have what they needed and communities that didn’t was that it all

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## Tags

ucberkeley, calalumstory

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