William Carter

At UC Berkeley, I am an active neurodiversity advocate, campaigner and policy developer. In Fall 2022, I was nominated to serve on the UC Berkeley Graduate Divisions inaugural 'Neurodiversity Task Force' - an initiative I helped to develop. I will co-write a report, with other committee members, making recommendations on neurodiversity provision and the future of graduate education at Cal.

Currently, I am working with Dr. Peter Cornish, the co-director of Counselling and Psychological Services at UC Berkeley, to develop a holistic Neurodivergent Care Team. This is an intervention aimed at demarcating the distinction between learning differences/disabilities and acute mental health challenges. Within this initiative, I will co-develop best practice guidelines, sharing these more widely across the UC-system, and beyond.

I am also an advocate for disabled students and the politics of disability. As Project Director for the Graduate Assemblies Disabled Students Advocacy Project (2021-2022), I co-founded the Disability Beyond Compliance initiative and co-wrote the 'DSP Crisis Quick Guide' with fellow Graduate Student Rosa Enriquez, M.S.W. The initiative secured over $60k of funding to use in a three-year development plan to institutionalize thinking through disability beyond compliance at Cal.

I also wrote a 24-page report entitled 'Exclusion by Design: An Infrastructure of Inaccessibility, and Systematic Disability Discrimination Practices,' which tracks the challenges facing disabled graduate students on campus, and lists opportunities for policy and programmatic improvements. This report was shared and discussed widely inside and outside UCB, and formed the launch point for a Fireside Chat with UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ on disabled graduate student services, which I co-chaired.

Additionally, as a Diversity and Community Fellow (2021/2022 – 2022/2023), I co-developed the Graduate Student Child Welfare System Impacted Youth Initiative. Together with the Berkeley Hope Scholars, I co-led efforts with the Graduate Division to host the first town hall for this community. The objectives were to accept a new definition for child welfare system impacted youth (replacing the previous Federal definition of Foster Youth), to change the Berkeley graduate application process with this new definition and way of being immediately routed to relevant campus services, a funded monthly dinner for this student group, a dual-mentorship model program for graduate students, and to double scholarship funding for Graduate students who are child welfare system impacted. All of these objectives were achieved, the policy suggestions agreed upon, and are currently being implemented by Graduate Division. As of Fall 2022, Graduate students who are child-welfare system impacted are benefiting from the doubling of their scholarship to $6k per student, which collectively amounts to an additional $40k of funding per year for this student group. All of the work that followed the town hall was done on a volunteer basis; I was not formally employed by the campus to initiate this effort.

To spur wider implementation, I presented my efforts and strategic plan, together with Charly King Beavers (Berkeley Hope Scholars Coordinator), at the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) Regional Conference (region 9) in Spring 2022. For these efforts, I was awarded the inaugural University of California Regents Leadership Award for services to Foster Youth (2022).

I have received numerous awards for my community engagement and also UK press attention for my advocacy, including website and YouTube profiles in The Times, Times Radio, ITV This Morning, BBC Radio 4 Today, and Ian Wright’s Everyday People podcast.