2026 Institute for Society and Genetics Commencement Ceremony
Saturday, June 13, 2026 || 5-7 PM Pacific || Kerckhoff Patio
2026 ISG Commencement Speaker
Chloe Winnett
UCLA Class of 2022 Human Biology and Society, B.S. & French and Francophone Studies minor
Chloe Winnett is a proud product of the California public school system. After a whirlwind pre-med career at UCLA, including a Spring Sing performance, a stint as a multivariable calculus TA, a clinical research publication, and an induction into Phi Beta Kappa, she changed gears and went to law school.
At UC Berkeley Law, Chloe discovered the utility of affirmative litigation as a tool to secure corporate accountability, promote health equity, and actualize social change.
She interned for the California Department of Justice in the Healthcare Rights & Access Section, where she assisted with lawsuits targeting pharmaceutical companies that overcharged consumers, private equity firms that harmed patients, and hospitals that violated Californians’ abortion access rights.
She performed pro bono support work for a lawsuit challenging the racially disparate health impacts of pulse oximeters during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Symposium Director of Ecology Law Quarterly, she organized the journal’s first Symposium dedicated to environmental health issues and litigation, hosting interdisciplinary speakers including healthcare workers and community activists.
During law school, she was selected to work as a judicial extern for The Honorable Charles R. Breyer of the Northern District of California. In his chambers, she navigated a variety of complex civil motions and honed her legal writing skills. She then spent a summer at renowned plaintiffs’-side firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, where she assisted with mass tort, employment discrimination, antitrust, and consumer protection litigation. The highlight of her law school experience was assisting Lieff Cabraser attorneys—as well as professors from her own law school—in Thakur v. Trump, landmark litigation seeking to restore federal funding for University of California researchers whose grants were unlawfully terminated by the Trump Administration.
Chloe will start her career as an attorney at Lieff Cabraser this fall. She will spend this career in service of the public good, using civil prosecution to fight for environmental and reproductive justice and challenging profit-driven abuses of patient-consumers.