alumni profile
THE WORK OF
INCLUSION
IS NEVER DONE Ella Callow (BA ‘97)
Ella Callow, this year’s commencement speaker for Berkeley Social Welfare, has spent her career tackling one of the central questions of inclusion. “How do barriers impact the well-being of individuals with disabilities? And how can the system better serve these families so that we’re being true to our mandates as an inclusive society, and also so that we have the benefit of the contributions of these individuals and families?” In her role as UC Berkeley’s ADA/Section 504 Compliance Officer, she is responsible for ensuring campus compliance with federal and state regulations as well as university policies pertaining to access and inclusion for people with disabilities. But when she assumed this role in Fall 2018, it was the continuation of a story that began in Haviland Hall. As an undergrad at Cal, Callow had a double major in Native
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SOCIAL WELFARE AT BERKELEY ALUMNI PROFILE
American Studies and Social Welfare, and Mary Ann Mason’s child-centric approach to social welfare inspired her to combine those two interests. With the encouragement of Mary Ann Mason and another faculty mentor in Native American Studies, Patricia Penn-Hilden, she applied to Berkeley Law in order to bring a legal perspective to her work on child welfare. Not long after earning her JD, she went to work at Through the Looking Glass, a Berkeley-based nonprofit that supports families where either the parent or the child has a disability. Through the Looking Glass had long been a resource for questions about adaptive baby equipment — like using a desk as a wheelchair-accessible changing table. With federal funding, TLG became the first National Center for Parents With Disabilities and Their Families. As their Legal Director, Ella provided the expertise that allowed them to address the
