![\"an](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Amy-Lerman_headshot_630x810-796x1024.jpg\")
Amy E. Lerman<\/p>\n
Photo by Richard Koci Hernandez<\/p>\n
Its formula for impact? Expertise on the issues and practical knowledge of how government works, plus a nonpartisan network of partners that reaches from the farm fields of Southern California to the streets of Oakland, and from the walls of California prisons to the halls of the state Capitol. In a span of just a few years, allies say, the Possibility Lab has emerged as a sort of connective tissue linking the grassroots to top policy spheres.<\/p>\n
It is an unconventional role for a university-based policy program, and many seasoned California policy experts say they\u2019ve never seen anything like it.<\/p>\n
Don Howard, president and CEO of the James Irvine Foundation<\/a>, spoke at the May 29 Berkeley summit, and later said that the lab has emerged into \u201ca unique and increasingly essential role\u201d in California.<\/p>\n \u201cThey bring together the people most affected by policy decisions and those responsible for implementing the decisions,\u201d Howard said. \u201cIt\u2019s a bridge that is needed now more than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, at any given time, the lab is managing 15 or 20 projects in a broad range of fields<\/a>: food and water; crime and criminal justice; artificial intelligence; education; health; housing; childcare and eldercare; youth empowerment; race and equality; clean energy; and climate change.\u00a0<\/p>\n The lab rarely advocates specific policy reforms, but instead seeks to gather and amplify the insights of people affected by different challenges, and then to make sure that policymakers can hear and understand those insights. This sort of civic engagement is its primary mission, and the lab\u2019s team \u2014 a unique mix of researchers and practitioners \u2014 is helping design civic engagement activities that are directly informing public policy at the highest levels.<\/p>\n But the next challenge may be its biggest: After striking partnerships with the administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom, it will try to persuade the gubernatorial campaigns of Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra of the value of engaging the public in policymaking.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a public university, this should be the norm,\u201d Lerman said. \u201cWe should be in these conversations. The idea that we are serving the people of California \u2014 this is in our DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n An early connection with corrections officers<\/p>\n The Possibility Lab is affiliated with Berkeley\u2019s Goldman School of Public Policy and the Department of Political Science. It launched in 2022, but much earlier, when Lerman was a UC Berkeley graduate student in the early 2000s, she was interested in how diverse perspectives could help solve policy problems.<\/p>\n Photo courtesy of the Possibility Lab<\/p>\n She had been working with incarcerated students in the college program at San Quentin State Prison and realized she also needed to understand the experiences of correctional staff. So she connected with the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, and in that relationship she was developing the values and orientation that would shape her lab.<\/p>\n An alliance between conservative correctional officers and a young Berkeley scholar might seem unexpected. But Stephen A. Walker<\/a>, the director of correctional health for the officers union, recalls that there was a generational change underway among its ranks, and the leadership needed insight into its younger members.<\/p>\n \u201cWe reached out to Amy, and we asked if she would be interested in helping us figure out what our members\u2019 priorities were in contract bargaining,\u201d Walker explained. \u201cSurprisingly, but unsurprisingly, she jumped at the chance to help us measure this from a scientific perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n Some years later, union leaders were blindsided by the suicide of a corrections officer many of them knew well. Their desire to understand the pressures that could damage the physical and mental health of officers led to a study<\/a> by Lerman and her colleagues. The findings: Exposure to traumatic events inside the prison walls left them vulnerable to depression, PTSD and suicidal thoughts.<\/p>\n The idea that we are serving the people of California \u2014 this is in our DNA.<\/p>\n Amy E. Lerman, Possibility Lab executive director<\/p>\n Since its founding, the Possibility Lab has continued to work with the union and the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, recognizing that harsh conditions impact both prisoners and officers.<\/p>\n \u201cOfficers overwhelmingly, even still today, believe that those walls literally are silos,\u201d Walker said. \u201cThey keep their voices silent, they keep their interests and concerns trapped behind those walls.<\/p>\n \u201cI would be willing to debate anyone on this: Amy Lerman and the Possibility Lab have advanced this profession and opened it up. They\u2019ve catapulted those concerns and those fears out into the public, where they can be part of the same conversation about how conditions affect the incarcerated.\u201d<\/p>\n Data and deep listening\u00a0<\/p>\n In California, and in most states, there\u2019s a standard model for policy organizations and university research initiatives \u2014 and the Possibility Lab breaks those molds.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is not a consulting firm. It\u2019s not an advocacy group. It is not aligned with left or right, or with urban or rural interests. It produces data-rich reports and studies on state issues, but it expends much of its energy in organizing communities, listening to people and bringing people and policymakers together.<\/p>\n In some of its most ambitious early projects, the Possibility Lab focused on farmworkers<\/a> in the Inland Empire of Southern California, and on low-wage workers<\/a> across the state, through the California Workplace Outreach Project. To understand the deep dynamics of farmworker health, the staff worked not only with farmworkers, but with the state and local agencies that serve them, farmers who employ them, and with community organizations, legal clinics and others who support them.<\/p>\n Photo courtesy of the Possibility Lab<\/p>\n These projects relied on deep listening. For example, one involved a dozen focus groups and town halls, bringing together over 200 field, warehouse and service workers. From those conversations, the lab researchers developed over 1,500 health indicators. Those were grouped into 15 categories, ranging from access to medical care and health insurance to environmental practices, education and spiritual health.\u00a0<\/p>\n Consistently, the farmworkers told the lab team that their physical and mental health is closely tied to economic security. According to the project\u2019s report, that\u2019s the sort of insight that\u2019s essential to good health policy.<\/p>\n A similar approach was taken in projects that assessed how residents thought about safety<\/a> in high-crime areas of Oakland and how cities respond to behavioral health emergencies. Local government, first responders and community nonprofits were included in these efforts, along with hundreds of local residents.<\/p>\n The Possibility Lab calls it \u201cpeople-centered policymaking,\u201d and Lerman defined it in a recent talk. \u201cI\u2019m a political scientist by training, and I\u2019ve been thinking about how distant we have become from government,\u201d she explained. \u201cWe think of the government as this set of professionals and institutions that is really separate from everyday people.<\/p>\n \u201cOccasionally we vote them in or out, but we don\u2019t think of ourselves as part of the apparatus of government. \u2026 Really, the goal is to think creatively about how we bridge that gap between government and community.\u201d<\/p>\n No headlines, but high impact\u00a0<\/p>\n When a program\u2019s top priority is to build bridges between communities and government, impact can be difficult to measure. Its work doesn\u2019t usually result in completely new laws \u2014 but often it changes how programs and policies are implemented on the ground.<\/p>\n Lerman said the low-wage worker project helped inspire the state\u2019s new Rural Strategic Engagement Plan<\/a>, which recognizes that farmworkers are essential to California\u2019s economy and provides several million dollars annually to make state resources and services more responsive and accessible to agricultural communities. That\u2019s being implemented by the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency and the Agriculture Labor Relations Board, with the Possibility Lab in a key partnership role.<\/p>\n Photo courtesy of the Possibility Lab<\/p>\n In other cases, the lab\u2019s influence is profound, even though the full impact might be years away.\u00a0<\/p>\n After Newsom established the Youth Empowerment Commission<\/a>, the lab was enlisted as an expert partner almost from the start. Lab staff worked<\/a> with commission leaders to gather data, network with local youth commissions and develop a strategic plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Newsom established California\u2019s first Racial Equity Commission<\/a>, the Possibility Lab again was involved<\/a> in the earliest stages, helping to shape an effort that would strengthen the pursuit of racial equity in every state department and agency.\u00a0<\/p>\n The lab is helping to develop and implement \u201ca practical framework for how departments and agencies can assess their own strengths and gaps on racial equity, how they can think about measuring it over time \u2014 really, how they think about improving racial equity,\u201d Lerman explained. \u201cIt\u2019s a toolkit and a map for how they can go about doing that work systematically, and effectively, in budgeting, hiring and program delivery.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In a land of wealth, pervasive scarcity<\/p>\n In 2024, the lab worked with the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies on a poll to understand Californians\u2019 access to basic necessities<\/a>. The results were striking: 71% of voters struggled to find affordable housing. Sixty percent said eldercare was a challenge, while 57% reported difficulty in finding childcare. Nearly half said they couldn\u2019t find low-cost, healthy food or good local jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n More broadly, the lab was interested in answering why, in a state endowed with incredible wealth, so many people struggle to meet their basic needs. That question aligned the lab with the national abundance movement, and became the basis for a project called the Abundance Accelerator<\/a>.<\/p>\n Their ability to see the bigger picture, their ability to connect the dots \u2014 that was very exciting to me.<\/p>\n Maricela Rodriguez, Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s senior adviser for civic engagement <\/p>\n In a time of political polarization and economic insecurity, Lerman says, the abundance idea asks for everyone to examine how their ideology, though well-intentioned, may contribute to scarcity. To promote housing construction, for example, liberals have to be willing to ease government regulation, while conservatives should accept government\u2019s role in solving the problem.<\/p>\n Libby Schaaf served two terms as Oakland\u2019s mayor, and before she was named president and CEO of the Bay Area Council<\/a> last April, she was closely involved in California\u2019s abundance movement. Her work has often intersected with the Possibility Lab.<\/p>\n \u201cI think California is in a critical moment, and democracy is in a critical moment,\u201d Schaaf said. \u201cWhat I appreciate about \u2026 the work that the Possibility Lab is doing and the way that they\u2019re doing it is that they\u2019re not choosing a side. They\u2019re trying to lean in seriously to the questions about the utility of governmental policy and process, but with a clear-eyed commitment to the democratic and social values of ending suffering and poverty and inequality.\u201d<\/p>\n Street cred \u2014 and high-level cred, too<\/p>\n This extensive work, across so many issues and regions of the state, has helped the Possibility Lab to create a remarkable corps of partners. Still, what the lab has done has no recent precedent: an academic research unit, taking an organizing role, and building partnerships not just with community organizations but with the news media, philanthropists and at all levels of local and state government.<\/p>\n Last September, the lab launched a partnership with CalMatters<\/a>, the influential Sacramento-based news publication that\u2019s focused on California policy and politics. The agreement created the Knowledge Hub<\/a>, a website in the CalMatters domain that publishes academic research into state policy issues. The Possibility Lab produced the initial papers, but CalMatters CEO Neil Chase says the hub will open to other researchers in the months ahead.<\/p>\n To call the partnership innovative is an understatement \u2014 it\u2019s almost unheard of for a serious news journal to partner with an academic policy program and to publish its research. But Chase, in an interview, described it as updated community journalism, a throwback to days when small-town papers would publish school lunch menus or big-city newspapers would provide a rich travel section.<\/p>\n The Knowledge Hub, he explained, was \u201can opportunity for us to build a site where you could have vetted, high-quality content that is relevant to the world we cover, which is California policy and politics \u2026 even if it doesn\u2019t rise to the level where we would write a story about it.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd,\u201d he added, \u201cI think it\u2019s our role to use the levers of journalism to improve the operation of democracy and the way policy happens.\u201d<\/p>\n At about the same time last year, the lab was assembling a list of case studies illustrating effective civic engagement projects. Newsom\u2019s administration had made civic engagement a priority, and lab staff put together a working group of state leaders who helped gather recommendations on where innovations were happening.<\/p>\n![\"Amy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Possibility_Lab_summit_crowd_shot_7x4-1024x585.jpg\")
Possibilty Lab Executive Director Amy E. Lerman, at left, addresses the audience at the May 29 Engaging Possibility Summit. Dozens of high-level community organizers, government officials, philanthropists and journalists discussed innovative ways to bridge the gap between Californians and their government.<\/p>\n![\"With](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Possibility_Lab_farmworkers_field_7x4-1024x576.jpg\")
A project organized by the Possibility Lab and its partners focused on farmworkers and other low-wage workers \u2014 and led to a state commitment of several million dollars annually to make services more responsive and accessible to agricultural communities.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Possibility_Lab_board_game_7x4-1024x586.jpg\")
Possibility Lab events often feature role-playing games to help participants understand the complex objectives that guide different parties in government \u2014 and their different values and priorities. <\/p>\n
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UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons told the audience that Berkeley is the natural place for an event that \u201cbrings together people from different sectors, people with different areas of interest and expertise, and with different perspectives and beliefs\u201d to solve critically important challenges. <\/p>\n