Page 25 - Berkeley BPW Club Centennial Commemorative Booklet - May 21st 2022_Neat

AWARDEES 25

Gwen Marie Austin

2022 Berkeley BPW’s
Woman of the Year.

Prior to 2000, Gwen’s professional background consist-
ed of working for Fortune 400 companies (mostly accounting
and insurance) as an Administrator. Gwen also worked for
the American Bar Association as a Staff Director, and since
then, she returned to college to finish her studies in educa-
tion (double major Education/English) and a minor in Human
Resource Development which involved andragogy (retraining
our adult population for our ever-changing society). Gwen
continued onto graduate school where her concentration was
primarily on law/social & criminal justice-research on social
policy and the juvenile justice systems. Gwen briefly taught
social justice and ethics at the college she graduated from.

Since moving back to California, Gwen have moved away
from the corporate and educational workplaces to now work-
ing for a non-profit that works directly with individuals and
families struggling to turn their lives around through circum-
stances which oftentimes are no fault of their own.

In her own personal and professional growth, Gwen
has spent a great deal of time learning about the community
she lives in, the communities that surround her and the peo-
ple who make up those communities. Gwen has involved
herself as the president of the board of directors for an or-
ganization that worked with the homeless community and
served as a commissioner for Alameda County’s Commission
on the Status of Women.