Alumni Profile

Steve Zipperstein ’83 is General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer at BlackBerry Ltd.  Previously, he was General Counsel of Verizon Wireless. He has also served as Chief Assistant United States Attorney in Los Angeles and held high-level positions in the Justice Department in Washington, D.C.

Professor Elisabeth Semel ’75 has directed the Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic since its creation in 2001. She began her career as a deputy public defender, later formed the firm of Semel & Feldman in San Diego, and subsequently directed the American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project.

The Honorable Alberto S. Roldan ’92 is an Administrative Law Judge II with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. His previous positions include Chief Administrative Law Judge and Executive Director for the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, Chief Deputy General Counsel to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Deputy Appointments Secretary, and Deputy District Attorney for the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office.

Justice Kathleen Butz was appointed to California's Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District by Governor Gray Davis and confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments on October 15, 2003. Before going to law school, Justice Butz earned her bachelor's degree in International Relations from UC Davis.

Angela Oh ’86 is an attorney, public lecturer, community leader, social activist, writer, artist, and ordained student of Zen who has worked as a Lecturer on race and American law at UCLA, USC, and UC Irvine, a member of the Advisory Board of President Clinton's Initiative on Race, Executive Director of the Western Justice Center Foundation, and more. Today, she is an Attorney Mediator at the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

Amal Abu-Rahma is a 1997 graduate of King Hall and is Senior Counsel for California’s Department of Managed Health Care, Office of Plan Licensing, where she works with HMOs, PPOs and other health care service plans, assisting them with licensing and compliance standards under the federal Affordable Care Act as well as California’s Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act.

Kara Ueda is a 2000 graduate of UC Davis School of Law. A partner at Best Best & Krieger, she is a member of the firm’s Municipal Law practice group. She also attended UC Davis as an undergraduate, where she majored in Environmental Policy, Analysis, and Planning. Ueda also serves as a Visiting Lecturer at King Hall, where she teaches Local Government Law.

Grace Arupo Rodriguez '02 is the Deputy Director of Legal Affairs for California Governor Jerry Brown's Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz). As the Deputy Director of GO-Biz, Arupo Rodriguez is the general counsel for GO-Biz's various economic development programs which range from the Film Commission to Tourism to International Trade and Foreign Investment to California's Innovation Program.

Marc A. Levinson '73, a partner in the Restructuring Group in Orrick's Sacramento office, is widely recognized as a leading municipal bankruptcy lawyer. In 2009 and in 2015, he was selected as a "Dealmaker of the Year" by The American Lawyer for his work on the bankruptcy cases of the cities of Vallejo and Stockton. The Daily Journal has named him as one of California's Top 100 Lawyers four times and selected him as one of California's Top 25 Municipal Lawyers in 2011, 2012, and 2013.