Scholarship Recipient: Ashley Gayles ’10
She went to an inner-city Sacramento high school whose graduates didn’t typically go on to Cal. In addition, personal challenges — including growing up in a single-parent family dependent on welfare, and the death of her father before she was born — didn’t put her on the fast track to academic success.
Still, her mother always impressed upon her the importance of school, so Gayles worked hard, earned good grades, and, when the time came, mailed an application anyway. Her response when she received the letter welcoming her as a member of the 2006 freshman class? “I was so shocked when I found out I was accepted by Berkeley. It really boosted my confidence that a school like this wanted me.”
The first in her family to go to college, Gayles earned her B.A. in Political Science in 2010. She gives much of the credit for her positive experience at Berkeley to her California Alumni Association Achievement Award Scholarship, which recognized her academic distinction in the face of major life obstacles. Thanks to her scholarship — which was made possible by generous planned gifts from Phyllis Epstein Friedman — Gayles received four years of tuition and fees, as well as an invaluable support system to help with academic and career issues. Having her scholarship freed her from money worries and allowed her to concentrate on her studies and prepare for a career. It also allowed her to tutor middle school and high school students who are confronting some of the same challenges she faced. “I really like working with underprivileged students to help them get an education,” she explains, “because I’ve seen what’s possible.”
