Elizabeth Cabraser ‘70
For Elizabeth Cabraser ’70, the fire of social justice was ignited early on. Her education at O’Dowd and then UC Berkeley fanned the flames from which a stellar legal career would rise. She went on to be an early name partner in San Francisco’s renowned law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP and to become one of the country’s leading class action litigators.
But Elizabeth never forgot those early lessons in social equity at O’Dowd. Her $1 million gift toward the construction of the O’Dowd Center was the first seven-figure donation ever made to the school by an individual. Such pay-it-forward generosity reflects the very spirit and values that imbue an O’Dowd education.
““Justice is not something instantly achieved,” she said at the 2018 Founder’s Day celebration. “Our job is to work toward justice and then to pass the torch, and to hope and pray that others will continue to advance toward greater justice for every- one in the world.””
Cabraser was born in Oakland, as were her parents, and though by high school the family had moved to Castro Valley, Elizabeth was set on attending O’Dowd, and commuted each way by bus to attend. “I lived on the AC Transit 82 bus,” she recalls. “I missed Oakland and its diversity, where I felt most at home.” Her excel- lent academic performance earned her a National Merit Scholarship and “advanced admission” to UC Berkeley while she was still attending O’Dowd.
“This meant that I, of course, immediately got involved in all the political activities at Berkeley and became an outside agitator in my own high school,” she recalls with a smile. “I think the nuns started to rethink the advanced admissions program almost immediately after several of us came back and organized anti-war protests.”
Despite her name appearing on every list of top lawyers, Cabraser has never forgotten her humble origins and the social justice values she learned at O’Dowd. “I’ve belatedly realized how much I owe to this school and its vision as an institution,” she said in her Founder’s Day remarks. “Its commitment to assisting all of us — whatever our dreams, whoever we are — to make some- thing of our lives that has meaning.”
