Alumni Gifts and Support

Join the new College Alumni Board

Attention all College Alumni who are early movers, shakers, and rising stars. The College is establishing a new Alumni Board and we are hoping to hear from you!

We are looking for young alumni who can provide strategic advice and leadership on how the College should further engage mid-career alumni, enhance corporate relations, and increase leadership-level giving to our annual funds.

As a Board member you should be interested in participating in the following:

• Provide supportive leadership for the College, • Act as corporate, regional, or university liaisons, • Participate in online alumni panel discussions, • Promote the College via social media, • Provide mentorship to current students via the Chemistry

Alumni Mentorship Program, • Set a precedent for others by annually giving $1,000+ to the

College, and • Participate in semi-annual meetings and an annual dinner.

WHY GIVING BACK IS IMPORTANT

“I wanted to deepen my connection to Berkeley and the College of Chemistry. My experience was so formative and important, and I got help from so many mentors while I was on campus. It feels right to pay it forward and continue to create the amazing environment that Berkeley’s College of Chemistry truly is. I hope this new group can set realistic and achievable goals that moves the needle in terms of increasing alumni engagement and connection to the College. It’s no secret Berkeley chemistry/chemical engineering is one of the premier set of programs in the country. I feel we can do a better job at keeping that front of mind for people.”

— WAYNE SACKETT (B.S. ’06, CHEME) – INAUGURAL CO-CHAIR “Since graduating in 2014, I’ve sought opportunities to contribute my time and skills back to the University and the College. I owe an enormous amount of my success personally and professionally to the College and the connections I made there and feel a desire to contribute back to the greater community. There is such an unbridled depth of talent and diversity in our alumni waiting for the right purposeful and aligned engagement. I hope to formulate a culture of philanthropy and service amongst the Alumni Board and wider alumni community. My vision is to provide a deeper, more streamlined connection between the College and our alumni.”

— ROSS CROCKETT (B.S. ’14, CHEME) – INAUGURAL CO-CHAIR

Sung-Hou and Rosalind Kim

BUILDERS of BERKELEY

In their 53 years of marriage, Professor of the Graduate School Sung-Hou Kim and his wife Rosalind have shared one significant trait: a passion for the transformative power of education. When Sung-Hou emigrated to the United States from Korea, he was the first in his family to attend college. It was at MIT that he met Rosalind; Sung-Hou was a postdoctoral fellow, and Rosalind was taking part in a co-op from Antioch College in Ohio. Rosalind, who is of Chinese descent and grew up in Cuba, initially wasn’t sure about the life Sung-Hou imagined out West. “I didn’t want to come, because California has earthquakes,” she says. “But it was the right move.” After seven years at Duke University, they moved to Berkeley in 1978 where Sung-Hou taught chemistry for more than 40 years at the College of Chemistry. He is now a researcher and Professor of the Graduate School. Rosalind worked as an associate specialist in the Calvin Laboratory, specializing in cloning and purifying proteins for X-ray crystallography studies. Sung-Hou directed one of five national centers for the Protein Structure Initiative, funded by the National Institutes of Health in an attempt to map the protein structure universe. His laboratory also determined the 3-D structures of some of the key molecules in a cell’s survival and replication, such as transfer RNA as a genetic code translator, and Ras proteins and protein kinases as signal transducers. These structures played important roles in the development of new drugs to fight cancers and other diseases.

The Kims’ professional lives benefitted from fellowships and research grants. “Over the years, we have always given back,” says Sung-Hou, a professor emeritus who continues to do research as a professor of graduate studies in the College. The couple has long made financial contributions across a wide swath of the Berkeley experience — including scholarships to support students who are the first in their families to attend Berkeley, the University Library, and research programs in chemistry and other research topics.

Alumni Wayne Sackett and Alisa Arunamata establish endowment in honor of their children

Wayne Sackett (B.S. ’06, ChemE) and Dr. Alisa Arunamata (B.A. ’05, MCB) have established the Andrew T. and Elizabeth A. Sackett Endowment Fund in honor of their children. The fund is intended for use by the College’s Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SACKETT FAMILY. “Earning our degrees in science from Berkeley laid the foundation for us to think systematically and rigorously in all aspects of our life, while maintaining sight of high-level strategy,” says Wayne, who graduated with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 2006. The years obtaining his degree were formative to his world view, “I learned how to analyze complex problems with disorganized data and boil it down to just one or two important concepts.” Alisa agrees. After graduating from Berkeley in 2005 with a degree in Molecular and Cell Biology she moved on to medical school at New York University where she earned her M.D. in 2009. “Berkeley’s academic demands proved to me that I was capable of successfully pursuing a career in medicine, and the important foundations I learned in college quickly became apparent in my first year of medical school.”

However, Berkeley is much more than a college to them. It also happens to be where they first met during their sophomore year in 2004 . “We’ll always remember our dates, getting nachos at La Burrita and then studying all night at Moffitt Library,” Wayne and Alisa laugh. Settling in California was always the plan for Alisa. She returned home to the Bay Area in 2009 for her residency in pediatrics, pediatric cardiology fellowship, and advanced imaging fellowship focusing on echocardiography - all at Stanford Hospital. Today, she is a Clinical Assistant Professor in Pediatric Cardiology at Stanford University School of Medicine and leads the fellowship program and inpatient acute cardiac unit.

After Wayne earned his undergraduate degree, his first job was as a process engineer at an oil refinery. However, he quickly turned his attention to business and finance - learning how to raise capital, execute transactions, evaluate opportunities and, importantly, how to build enduring and great businesses while working in investment banking and private equity. He went back to graduate school, earning his M.B.A. at Harvard. “After Harvard, I felt an undeniable pull to return to my roots in biotech,” Wayne says. In 2015, Wayne joined the startup, MyoKardia, eventually serving as Head of Business Development and Corporate Strategy. The company discovered and advanced a novel small molecule drug candidate, Mavacamten, for the potential treatment of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a rare and debilitating heart condition. As an early employee, he helped shepherd the company’s strategy, growth and development, culminating in Bristol Myers Squibb acquiring the company in 2020 for $13.1 billion. “It is amazing how many different career trajectories you can take with a chemical engineering degree,” Wayne comments. “It is not a textbook discipline, where you master a set of finite and fixed concepts; instead it is all about how to continue learning. I am deeply curious and consider myself a lifelong learner. I have relied heavily on this throughout my career.” When asked to reflect on lessons from her time at Cal, Alisa states, “There is no shortage of faculty and colleagues willing to mentor you, but you need to take advantage of these opportunities, connections, and the incredible network that exists while you are there.” She continues, “We hope we can show people that there is so much that can be accomplished with a degree from Berkeley. The path you take in your career might not be straightforward, but it can be deeply satisfying.”

“When we decided to create this fund, we knew we would name it after Andrew and Elizabeth,” Wayne states. “This upcoming generation has an incredibly bright and optimistic future, largely due to breakthroughs in the scientific and medical fields. We also hope that it can serve as an example for our children to embrace the values of generosity and appreciation. We are fortunate to have careers that allow us to pursue our passions. Berkeley was a big reason for that, and we want to create opportunities for others by giving back.”