Shirley Dean - Recent Community Involvement

Recent Community Involvement

Since leaving the Mayor’s Office in 2002, Dean has been involved in several community and environmental organizations, serving on the boards of:

• Save Strawberry Canyon, an organization working to preserve the watershed and woodlands of Strawberry Canyon from proposed construction by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
• A Better Way, an East Bay social service and mental health agency that serves children and their families.
• Citizens for East Shore Parks (CESP), working to extend the waterfront park through Point Molate in Richmond, California.

In 2003, Dean was named Woman of the year by the Zonta Club of Berkeley/North Bay. In 2009, Dean appeared in the documentary film Power Trip: Theatrically Berkeley about the controversial greening of Berkeley after the passage of Berkeley Proposition G. Dean made headlines in 2007 when she, at age 71, city council member Betty Olds, 86, and noted environmentalist and co-founder of Save the Bay, Sylvia McLaughlin, 90, climbed a ladder to briefly join a tree-sit aimed at saving the Memorial Oak Grove outside the stadium of the University of California, Berkeley. After a 21-month protest, the oak trees were cut down.