alumni profile
In Service to the
PUBLIC GOOD Greg Evans (MSW ‘86)
Meeting Greg Evans (MSW ‘86) in the high-rise office of the McGuireWoods law firm in downtown San Francisco, you wouldn’t guess that he opened his first law office in a homeless shelter. As a law student in South Bend, Indiana, he had worked with the school’s Dean and the community to open a shelter in an abandoned department store using federal McKinney Act funding, and he ran the South Bend Legal Clinic for the Homeless in the shelter. Evans had already worked with homeless populations during his first-year MSW field placement at the Larkin Street Youth Center in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, and knew that access to housing was the foundation on which other supportive services could be added. His first trial represented a woman who was being evicted from public housing because she didn’t pay rent on time. Evans remembers the initial call: “I said, ‘Well, where are you?’ and she said, ‘I’m at my section 8 housing in Mishawaka, Indiana and the sheriff has just served us and I don’t have anywhere to go with my children.’ I said ‘Stay put, I’m on my way.’” The case eventually went to trial, and the family was able to stay in their home. Throughout his career, he has consistently used the law as a tool to advance the social welfare values he learned at
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SOCIAL WELFARE AT BERKELEY ALUMNI PROFILE
Cal, ensuring the setting and implementation of policy that enables the day-to-day work of direct service. His focus on helping others emerged early on. Growing up in a lower-income neighborhood in Los Angeles, he saw his mother — the daughter of immigrants — consistently volunteering in the community. “My mother taught us by example the importance of helping others even though you may be of very limited means. That’s when I first became interested in working in the area of social welfare and social policy.” Evans was in the process of applying to law schools when he learned about the MSW program at UC Berkeley. “Dean Specht, was, I think, the best recruiter that the university could have had for the School of Social Welfare. You got the feeling when you met Dean Specht that you had this tremendous talent and he had confidence you were going to be able to devote your energy in the right areas.” These days, Evans is a litigator with McGuireWoods, a law firm with offices around the country and internationally. His legal career has been informed by his time in Haviland Hall: he is quick to point out that the creation of policy goes hand-in-hand with the provision of services, and the practice
