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For 20 years, UC Berkeley Haas' Center for Social Sector Leadership has prepared mission-driven leaders—its flagship Social Sector Solutions course deploying student teams that have reshaped policy on myriad issues, including child abuse, food security, and healthcare in prisons.
It’s hard to convince decision-makers to invest in preventing problems.
They often favor immediate crisis response over long-term risk reduction. Katie Albright saw this firsthand as president and CEO of Safe & Sound, a San Francisco-based nonprofit working to prevent child abuse and reduce its devastating impact. There’s substantial regulation, funding, and support for kids in foster care, Albright says, but not upstream, where support services and education could help families stay together and avoid the child welfare system.
In 2016, Safe & Sound asked Haas to help make the case for proactive investment. Specifically, it sought the services of Social Sector Solutions (S3), a flagship consulting course offered by Haas’ Center for Social Sector Leadership (CSSL) that dispatches multidisciplinary student teams to help social impact clients tackle key issues.
Data existed at the federal level on what child abuse cost systems, families, and individuals, including for special education, incarceration, and loss of productivity, health, and well-being. But San Francisco’s numbers were unknown. An S3 team developed a methodology with Safe & Sound to analyze the cost of child abuse in San Francisco and turn complex data into actionable strategies. That same approach, with its reports, models, and toolkits, later was used by most of California’s 58 counties and contributed to statewide policy changes that narrowed the definition of child neglect and strengthened family support.
Albright, now executive director of UC Berkeley’s Equity and Excellence in Early Childhood, credits the S3 team with giving necessary clout to a community-based organization and prompting state leaders to action. “Partnering with Haas helped validate and amplify our work in ways that decision-makers couldn’t ignore,” she says. “That was transformational.”
S3 Case Study
Safe & Sound
Strengthening families
Haas modeling revealed that child abuse costs California $16.5–$27 billion annually, reframing prevention as both a moral imperative and a fiscal necessity. The findings helped catalyze statewide reforms.
An influential S3 course is just one part of the ever-expanding CSSL, which is celebrating 20 years at Haas. But S3 (pronounced “S cubed”) provides an effective lens by which to understand CSSL’s modus operandi: hands-on, dynamic programs and real-world connections that equip students to lead organizations creating positive impact. CSSL’s evolution has meant greater benefits for social impact leaders, companies, and communities—training CSSL leadership says is more vital than ever to address global challenges.
“We need to make sure social impact continues to differentiate Haas from other business schools,” says Linda Frey, CSSL’s executive director. “That means putting Haas on the map as the top business school in the country—if not the world—when it comes to preparing future social impact leaders.”
Efforts at Haas to prepare ethical, socially focused leaders began in the 1950s, when Earl Cheit, professor and future dean, introduced the study of corporate social responsibility. Haas was also an early leader in examining nonprofit leadership. Professor Frances Van Loo taught the first course on it in 1985.
As business evolved, so too did Haas students’ passion for solving big problems. In late 2003, Nora Silver, a serial entrepreneur with an organizational consulting background, joined Haas to respond to student interest in nonprofit and public organizations and to elevate this facet of the school.
“My students often told me, ‘We want to make a difference. We want to change the world.’ And I thought, ‘Well, what would that look like?’” Silver says. So in 2006 she founded the Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership, the precursor to CSSL, and has since shepherded it as executive director, faculty director, and now adjunct professor.
Over the years, Silver added new CSSL courses, including Strategic Philanthropy, which trains students to be effective philanthropists by having teams determine which nonprofit to award a $10,000 gift (initially provided by the Learning by Giving Foundation), and Large-Scale Social Change: Social Movements, which teaches rising leaders about the world’s significant social movements and the tools that drive them.
As CSSL grew, Silver knew she’d hit on something big. “Soon there was a larger mission within the business school,” she says, “which was to help students know how to make a difference in the world over time, across sectors, and in broad ways.” Today, nearly one-third of incoming Haas students express interest in social impact, citing Haas assets in this area as an important factor in their decision to enroll.
Soon there was a larger mission within the business school, which was to help students know how to make a difference in the world over time, across sectors, and in broad ways.”
Nora Silver, CSSL founder
A renaming in 2015 to the Center for Social Sector Leadership reflected a shifting landscape of nonprofit, public, and private companies into more hybrid models and a broader vision at Haas to train leaders to tackle complex challenges across many sectors—including social enterprise, impact investing, philanthropy, and corporate social impact.
“We know that real change happens with collaboration,” explains Silver. “No one organization, no matter how rich or powerful, is going to solve a major problem on its own.”
Since its inception, CSSL’s academic courses have jumped from two to 20, its experiential programs from one to five, and its number of engaged students from about 75 to more than 550.
S3 has always been a part of the curriculum. Giving students hands-on consulting experience, Silver felt, was crucial to preparing them to make lasting societal improvements. She soon recruited Paul Jansen—a partner at McKinsey and Co. and a leader of its social sector practice—to co-teach the course. He brought along volunteers from McKinsey to coach S3’s student teams.
“Nora really saw the value in having currently practicing consultants as coaches,” says Jansen, a Haas adjunct professor. He taught S3 with Silver for 14 years and now teaches the course with Joe Dougherty, a professional faculty member and Dalberg Advisors partner.
Experiential learning is key to S3. Each spring semester, client organizations are paired with teams of five to six students that include a mix of MBAs, Haas undergraduates, and grad students from other academic departments. This term there are 63 students, 10 clients, and 11 projects.
Teams spend the entire semester on client projects and receive weekly support from Jansen, Dougherty, and the McKinsey coaches. Organizations nationwide and beyond pay S3 a fee that’s significantly less than they’d pay elsewhere for the 900 consulting hours each team provides.
Michael de la Guardia, MBA/MPH 22, arrived at Haas committed to social impact. He’d been a consultant for the public sector, including for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the early days of COVID. “I viewed grad school as an opportunity to transition from consulting to actually being a leader and directly working on policy issues,” he says.
In S3, de la Guardia led the team consulting for Berkeley Food Network (BFN), now the largest food assistance organization in Northern Alameda County. For years, BFN had sought a community-centered approach to sourcing and distributing food, a departure from traditional reliance on big commercial farms.
The team’s recommendations included building relationships with local farmers, investing in more storage and refrigeration, and appealing to donors who, in addition to feeding people, care about sustainability and supporting local farms.
S3 Case Study
Berkeley Food Network
Building food-secure communities
In 2018, an S3 team assisted BFN founders with a blueprint for the nonprofit’s development, structure, and future growth. This proof-of-concept helped BFN work with Berkeley officials and obtain warehouse space.
Today, de la Guardia is a deputy director at the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He says his experience in S3 has been invaluable.
“For a time, I was running a program that helped get healthy food to about 8 million low-income Medicare patients,” he says, “Part of our work was thinking about how local organizations, like the BFNs of the world, played into getting that food to patients.”
For Katelyn McMeekin-Jackson, MBA 26, her S3 consulting project provided the next step in her career trajectory. A part of the EWMBA Flex cohort, McMeekin-Jackson was working in the nonprofit sector and wanted to deepen her skills. The weekly S3 class meant driving 270 miles from her home to campus and sleeping on a friend’s sofa, but it was worth it.
In spring 2025, her S3 team advised Clinic by the Bay, a San Francisco nonprofit providing free healthcare to low-income and uninsured adults, on how to reverse a decline in patient visits and anticipate changes in state healthcare insurance.
When the clinic needed a new executive director later that spring, it hired McMeekin-Jackson, noting her work on the S3 team. Today, she says patient visits are up 24% and that the help S3 provided plus other wisdom gained at Haas keep making a difference in her work. “I’m passionate about translating what I’ve learned from my MBA to the nonprofit world,” she says.
S3 Case Study
Clinic by the Bay
Free healthcare for the uninsured
Partnering with an S3 team reversed a decline in patient visits, upping them 24% through recommended outreach to day laborers, elementary school parents, high schoolers, Chinatown residents, and the Mexican Consulate.
It’s hard to say who benefits more from S3—the students or their clients.
This spring, Impact Justice, a national research and innovation center that designs programs for people who are currently, formerly, or at risk of being incarcerated, is partnering with S3 for a fourth project in three years.
Aishatu Yusuf, the organization’s vice president of innovation programs, says Impact Justice must ideate, seed, pilot, and scale its programs from the ground up but often lacks the resources to do so. To bridge that gap, Yusuf first enlisted S3 in 2024.
That year, Impact Justice and an S3 team designed a menopause health program for incarcerated women in California. The nonprofit knew there was an unaddressed need, but not how big or fixable it was. The S3 team interviewed incarcerated women and medical practitioners and also modeled the cost of inaction.
“That was a really big piece for us and something we don’t typically do because of financial constraints,” Yusuf says. The cost of supporting thousands of women experiencing perimenopause and menopause in prison was projected to be far more affordable than inaction. And this grabbed policymakers’ attention.
As a result of this work, Impact Justice’s new Menopause Project received government funding and began implementation in January 2026. The organization now plans to expand the program nationally.
Watch team lead Chris Arreola, MBA 27, discuss working with McKinsey coaches and Impact Justice this semester:
S3 Case Study
Impact Justice
Scalable justice solutions
An S3 team developed a program in 2024 that today brings menopause resources to over 2,800 incarcerated women in two California state correctional facilities. The nonprofit plans to expand the project to other states.
One of CSSL’s hallmarks is that it evolves to meet the needs of student and alumni leaders seeking to effect real change in organizations.
Berkeley Board Fellows, for example, which has been preparing students to be impactful nonprofit board members since the center’s founding, has grown from eight students operating independently prior to CSSL’s launch to 80 students today with more expansion planned. It’s been renamed Golub Capital Board Fellows thanks to fresh funding.
Two years ago, CSSL launched Impact CFO, a program that trains MBA students for future finance roles in the social sector. One-of-a-kind nationally, Impact CFO was co-founded by Silver and Associate Professor Omri Even-Tov. Even-Tov went on to become the program’s director in 2025 and the faculty director for CSSL overall.
Last year, CSSL launched the Social Impact Professional Network, which organizes virtual coffee chats between Haas alumni and small groups of students, and the Alumni Board Community, which offers alumni practical tools and support to become effective nonprofit board members.
Experiential learning is key to S3. Each spring semester, client organizations are paired with teams of five to six students that include a mix of MBAs, Haas undergraduates, and grad students from other academic departments.”
Alumni also benefit by serving as CSSL guest speakers and advisory board members. Meera Chary, MBA 08, has done both, inspired by successful alumni she met when she was a student.
“[They] validated the reason I’d gone to business school in the first place,” says Chary, a partner and head of The Leadership Accelerator at The Bridgespan Group, a global nonprofit that advises mission-driven organizations and philanthropists.
She gives back because she cares deeply about social impact and is proud that the Haas community continues to prioritize the skills and mindset necessary to drive positive change.
“Leaders in the social sector face so many challenges,” says Chary, “so I love the idea of Haas and CSSL taking this on and saying, ‘What can we contribute to it? How can we make sure that we’re focused on the needs that exist?’”
CSSL is committed to ensuring that Haas students and alumni have the skills and network they need to continue solving big problems. Recently the center unveiled a three-year strategic plan that includes more courses and resources as well as a campaign to raise a $20 million endowment to fund it.
CSSL’s momentum reflects a broader institutional commitment. Dean Jenny Chatman has made impact and sustainability a central initiative of Haas’ strategic agenda, coordinating the school’s constellation of centers, research, and programs under a unified framework.
“The depth and breadth of Haas’ influence in sustainability and impact are remarkable,” Chatman says. “Connecting and amplifying our substantial assets will help cement Haas as the premier global business school for students, researchers, and leaders dedicated to and capable of profound progress for business and society.”
Staying at the forefront of how social impact is taught and practiced will attract and ensure a constant stream of visionary leaders equipped to harness their business skills to tackle some of society’s most intractable problems.
S3 co-instructor Jansen has witnessed how CSSL’s expanded offerings have improved the educational journeys of hundreds of students. “The next 20 years will be even better than the first 20,” he says.
Watch James Wang, MBA 26, discussing his experience in the S3 class this semester:
The Center for Social Sector Leadership (CSSL) at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business prepares students to lead organizations creating positive social impact. Founded in 2006, it has grown from two academic courses to 20, and from about 75 engaged students to more than 550.
Social Sector Solutions (S3) is a flagship consulting course at UC Berkeley Haas that pairs multidisciplinary student teams with social-impact client organizations for a full semester. Since its founding, 1,066 students have participated, and clients rate the experience an average of 9.3 out of 10.
S3 teams have helped nonprofits achieve measurable results, including reframing child-abuse prevention as a fiscal issue in California, helping Berkeley Food Network secure warehouse space and recover over 1 million pounds of food, raising patient visits at Clinic by the Bay by 24%, and bringing menopause resources to over 2,800 incarcerated women through Impact Justice.
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