Ceremony
- Welcome
- Keynote Address
- Student Addresses
- Ceremony
- Recognition of 2025 Academic and Achievement Award Recipients
- Conferral of Bachelor’s Degrees
- Conferral of Master’s Degrees
- Conferral of Doctoral Degrees
- Closing of Ceremony
Welcome
Susan Stone, PhD 
Dean
Catherine Mary and Eileen Clare Hutto Professor of Social Services
After decades of experience as a faculty member and administrative leader in the School of Social Welfare, Dr. Susan Stone stepped into the role of Dean this 2025-2026 academic year. Dr. Stone's research focuses on understanding and advancing the conditions and practices of school social work and other related service provision in educational settings to support the school experiences and trajectories of K-12 students, and emphasizes equitable school policies, routines, and practices. She is interested in partnered research approaches, in which research questions and procedures are co-constructed with community partners, gaining and applying knowledge that is responsive to the community’s interests and needs. Dr. Stone is a key leader in the San Francisco Unified School District-UC Berkeley Research-Practice Partnership.
Keynote Address
Adria Walker
Adria D. Walker is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and School of Social Welfare graduate with over two decades of experience providing care to individuals and families across the life course. Her work has focused specifically on behavioral health care and ground-level program development. She currently works as a therapist and provides clinical supervision for an Oakland-based non-profit. She is inspired and informed by Womanism, sustainable acts of resistance, and the endless potential of change.
Student Addresses
Bachelor’s Student Address
Alana Cathryn Moore
Alana C. Moore has earned her Bachelor of Arts in Social Welfare with high honors after previously completing two Associate of Arts degrees in Psychology and Sociology, both with High Honors, from City College of San Francisco. A mother of four, survivor, and Berkeley Changemaker Certificate recipient, she came to social welfare through lived experience and a deep commitment to serving women and families navigating trauma, systemic barriers, and crisis. Drawing on over a decade of direct patient care as a Certified Medical Assistant and her own healing journey, Alana is dedicated to a career in clinical therapy. She is in the process of opening a nonprofit organization offering safe housing, individual and group therapy, and wraparound social services for survivors of domestic violence.
Master’s Student Address
Arlinda Ruiz
Arlinda is a first-generation MSW graduate at UC Berkeley and a mother of three, dedicated to serving communities through trauma-informed care and social justice. Raised in Southeast Los Angeles by a Mexican immigrant family, she overcame significant challenges while navigating her own journey of healing and recovery. During her time in the program, she has empowered peers, cultivated inclusive spaces, and applied her lived experience to mentorship and advocacy. She is committed to creating lasting impact for families and communities, using her story to inspire resilience, hope, and opportunity.
Katie Truong
Katie (she/her | 她) is a first-generation Chinese Vietnamese San Francisco native and a proud recipient of the Harry Specht Memorial Fund Fellowship. During her time at Cal, she has served as a signatory for the Asian Pacific Islander Social Worker Caucus (APISWC) and as a sleep therapist at the UC Berkeley Sleep and Mood Research Clinic. Her proudest accomplishment is co-creating CommuniTEA — a space rooted in connection, care, and community building for cohort members. Katie brings both lived experience and a deep commitment to her work through storytelling and embodying quiet leadership.
Doctoral Student Address
Tiffany Luo 
Tiffany’s social work research and practice focus on addressing health disparities and increasing access to culturally responsive health care for medically underserved communities. Tiffany has developed, implemented, and evaluated digital health interventions, and she led a project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation to provide technology-based support for health behavior change and chronic illness prevention. Additionally, during her time in the doctoral program, Tiffany served as a Graduate Student Instructor for six courses and received the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award for her excellence in teaching and mentorship. Tiffany is passionate about preparing students to be culturally responsive and critically engaged social workers, and she recently started a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work at Palo Alto University.
Academic & Achievement Awardees
The James Midgley Leadership Award
Marc Tutwiler 
Marc has shown leadership in the School since arriving on the Berkeley campus. He served as a student representative to the Undergraduate Committee, where his contributions were always thoughtful, reasonable, and well-researched. Marc spearheaded a donation drive for a local nonprofit women's shelter while contributing to the revival of the Social Welfare Association for the Greater Good (SWAGG), the registered student organization for Social Welfare undergraduates.
Social Welfare Community Service Award
Amada Madrigal
Amada has shown persistence and dedication to empower communities within and outside of Social Welfare. She was integral to the revival of the Social Welfare Association for the Greater Good (SWAGG), the registered student organization for Social Welfare undergraduates, where she served two years as the organization’s president, partnered with other students to secure more than $7,000 in grants for the group, and has worked tirelessly to ensure the legacy continues. Passionate to serve student parents and their families, Amada started an initiative to support their basic needs at the University Village at Albany. She is deeply committed to serving others and has persevered through her degree, positively impacting those around her while being a student parent herself.
Social Welfare Dean’s Award for Academic Achievement
Alana Cathryn Moore
Alana Moore is the graduating Social Welfare student who has achieved the greatest degree of academic performance among undergraduates. Moore’s hard work and visionary efforts embody the mission of the School of Social Welfare and make a significant contribution to the social work community. Alana’s honors project was Beyond Emergency Response: Redefining Recovery for Intimate Partner Violence Survivors. The study examines why crisis-only intervention models frequently fall short of survivors' long-term recovery needs. Drawing on qualitative interviews with four IPV survivors and two service providers, the research argues for a fundamental shift away from emergency stabilization toward community-based, long-term support that addresses housing, employment, mental health, and peer connection. The project also includes a companion podcast designed to bring these findings to a broader public audience.
Excellence in Social Work Practice Award
Wenqing Li
Since Wenqing began her MSW journey, her work has consistently demonstrated how academic inquiry can translate into meaningful, culturally responsive practice for the underserved and immigrant communities. Across research, clinical training, and community-based programming, she is capable of moving between acquiring knowledge and applying it to real-world settings. Wenqing’s work embodies the spirit of this award: a sustained, thoughtful commitment to ensuring that classroom learning should not remain abstract but instead informs and transforms practice in ways that are equitable, culturally responsive, and impactful.
Ricardo Rubio
Ricardo’s strong commitment to advocating for the rights of vulnerable clients and his high level of clinical integrity are evident throughout his tenure at the UCSF/ZSFG Trauma Recovery Center. He seamlessly integrated various practices that advance human rights and social justice in both his clinical work with clients and in his consultations and collaborations with staff. Ricardo's curiosity, pursuit of knowledge, deep capacity for self-reflection, and strong sense of groundedness make him an exceptional clinician and asset to the social work field.
Ralph M. Kramer Award for Outstanding Strengthening Communities and Organizations Student
Giovanni Velasco Morales
Giovanni has demonstrated incredible leadership and community involvement since his first year as an MSW student. He served as a coordinator for MSW student participation in the National Association of Social Workers Legislative Lobby Days in Sacramento, as a signatory for the student-led Critical Consciousness Collective, where he helped oversee a peer mentorship program focused on fostering cross-cohort support among MSW students, and as an MSW Student Ambassador. He has shown a deep commitment to fostering community among all of the spaces he enters. He has also been proactively engaged in bridging micro and macro social work practice with organizations such as Healthy Contra Costa and RDA Consulting, in applied research on recuperative care providers serving people experiencing homelessness, and in evaluating the Innovation Accelerator project focused on improving the integration of health and housing services.
Social Welfare Dean's Award for Social Justice
Caroline Fenton
Beyond her responsibilities as a full-time student, Caroline took on formal and informal leadership roles in the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly and student organizations, where she secured grants to provide support to the MSW student body. She continually shows up for herself and others through bridging and maintaining connections among students, providing peer mentorship, and co-hosting multiple fundraisers in support of those harmed by societal inequities. Caroline has empowered other students by sharing her perspective and motivations towards positive social change with grace, patience, understanding, warmth, curiosity, and an ever-generous spirit.
Arlinda Ruiz
Arlinda's lived experience and perspective provide an invaluable lens that amplifies her impact as a social worker. She does incredible work on campus with folks who previously have experienced substance use disorders, and through the Underground Scholars Initiative at Cal. Arlinda offers support to students across and off campus through her roles as a Student Recovery Coordinator with the Collegiate Recovery Program, an active member of Mindful Masters, a student organization dedicated to promoting mindfulness and community-building, and a second-year practicum student with the Veterans Association. She demonstrates social justice daily and, through her leadership, has helped many people with their recovery and educational needs.
Social Welfare Graduate Award for Outstanding Capstone Project
Noa Elliott
Bad Kids or Traumatized Girls? Structural Oppression, Diagnostic Bias, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder
Elliott's manuscript examines how clinicians draw the line between "defiance" and trauma when assessing Latina girls in California, pairing a structural analysis of chronic stressors with a side-by-side comparison of DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 criteria for ODD, PTSD, and Complex PTSD, and finds substantial overlap between them. The project stood out for its careful attention to how overlapping systems — clinical, educational, and immigration-related — shape the way young people’s behavior is interpreted and labeled. Its value lies in what it complicates, and in the clearer thinking that follows.
Hyeonsook Kim
Korean Adoptee Insider Knowledge and Birth Family Reunion among Transnational Korean Adoptees
Using grounded theory, Hyeon’s proposed capstone examines how "insider knowledge" functions as social capital for transnational Korean adoptees during birth-family reunions. Through interviews with adoptees, the project investigates how community-generated knowledge circulates to help overcome structural barriers. This study demonstrates a strong theoretical framework, methodological rigor, and the potential to reform institutional post-adoption support through the practice of cultural humility.
Ila Lane
Beyond the Checklist: What Quantitative ACE Scoring Misses in the Lives of Black Youth
Black youth disproportionately face adversity defined by structural forces such as racism, policing, and intergenerational trauma - realities largely missed by the popular Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) framework. Lane conducted a multi-phase qualitative analysis of ethnographic texts to show how dominant ACE measures capture only a portion of Black youths’ experiences, underscoring the critical omission of pervasive institutional harms like criminalization, surveillance, and school pushout. Her findings point to shifts needed in social work toward assessment tools that recognize and address structurally produced adversity.
The James and Khadija Midgley Dissertation Award
Ryan Karnoski
Transgender Children in the California Child Welfare System
Karnoski’s work examines the vulnerabilities of trans youth in the foster care system, noting their disproportionate overrepresentation across urban and rural areas. This raises concerns about the adequacy of child protection systems for this population. His dissertation first explores factors that affect the implementation of new requirements for gender-identity data collection in foster care. An online survey distributed to child welfare staff across 16 California counties revealed that some social workers avoid entering gender identity data to protect youth, while others may hold anti-trans views that hinder the adoption of inclusive practices. The findings highlight the need for thoughtful, trained staff to provide sensitive care for trans youth and work effectively with kin and foster families.
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) Award
Taylor Brown
Ph.D. candidate Taylor Brown was selected for his outstanding instruction alongside Jean Johnstone and Dr. Neil Gilbert in SOCWEL 112: Social Welfare Policy for the Spring 2025 and Fall 2025 semesters. As a GSI, Taylor demonstrated his creativity and intellectual capacity through innovative pedagogical approaches that cultivated critical thinking and engagement with the course material and among students in each class section. His research examines ecosocial policy, climate adaptation, poverty and inequality, and the ways social protection systems can either mitigate or reproduce inequity in the context of climate change. He has served as a Graduate Student Instructor for courses in social welfare policy, poverty and economic justice, and social welfare research, and has also independently taught courses and workshops in social work, research methods, and data science.