Sofia Marie Greenwald

As the daughter of an immigrant mother and growing up 15 minutes away from the Southern border, Sofia’s upbringing included two very different languages and cultures. It is because of those unique experiences and interactions that she has always had a deep interest and understanding in the uplifting of her Latine community through policy and the field of law. Her personal experiences with challenges accessing professional opportunities and facing workplace discrimination, due to her background, further inform and inspire her undergraduate efforts. She works to increase access to professional resources for underrepresented students through several Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion positions and initiatives for on-campus professional organizations.

Throughout her experiences and education, she has come to see firsthand the consequences of entrenched inequality within legal and political systems. She sees these trends of inequity extend beyond her community, compounded by the inaccessibility of legal services. She has dedicated herself to pro-bono legal clinics, working as an intern interpreting and translating for immigrants seeking asylum and adjustment of status for the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, and serving as an interpreter for Berkeley Law’s Name and Gender Change Workshop. This direct client work, breaking down language barriers and hearing the stories of those she served, allowed her to witness the direct impact of legislation on individuals, the critical need for policy advocacy, and how much we lack to address the needs of marginalized communities. Sofia’s accrued knowledge in the fields of Legal Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Political Economy in pursuit of her degree have sparked an ardent passion for breaking long-standing patterns of economic and racial inequality. She hopes to advocate for continued investment in social policy and the restructuring of legal systems to eliminate the effects of implicit bias, in order to ensure individuals with intersecting marginalized identities are not left behind in our collective progress.