Yolanda Berry '83

From Struggle to Success: Yolanda Berry ’83 Inspires the Class of 2024

“Growing up in a house filled with smart and prolific readers, I felt both dumb and lazy because I didn’t read,” recalled Yolanda Berry ’83, Mid-Pen’s annual alumni speaker at the Class of 2024 graduation.

Yolanda shared how her struggle with reading as a child led her to believe she was a failure. In the 1970s, there was much less awareness and understanding of dyslexia. Throughout elementary and middle school, she explained, her challenges were “compounded by the fact that I could read words, just not understand sentences. I mean, I could read a menu at a restaurant and the back of cereal boxes, but reading for content was beyond me.”

It wasn’t until she enrolled at Mid-Peninsula High School as a junior that she finally felt seen and supported. However, it wasn’t until her first semester at UC San Diego that she learned about dyslexia in a psychology class. Even then, resources were scarce, and she received little assistance. Without adequate support, she eventually failed out of UCSD. Despite this setback, she found success at San Francisco State University, where she developed effective study strategies and honed her strengths as a communicator and listener. She graduated exactly four years after her Mid-Pen commencement.

Although she had once aspired to pursue an advanced degree like many in her family, Yolanda shelved that dream, convinced that her dyslexia would prevent her from doing well on the GRE. Nonetheless, her career thrived in the tech industry during the 1990s dot-com boom. Her strong communication skills and technological expertise earned her leadership roles in tech support teams.

One notable position was at Wind River Systems, a leading provider of real-time embedded operating systems. As head of the escalations team, Yolanda became the go-to person when customers faced particularly challenging issues. “When customers were really pissed off, they called me,” she shared.

Among her career highlights was supporting the Mars Pathfinder mission. “When it landed,” she recalled, “there was a problem with a nested interrupt, so they called me, thus making me the first person to take a support call from another planet. Yes, this is my biggest claim to fame.”

Now living in the United Kingdom, Yolanda eventually earned a Master’s in Psychology from the University of Derby in 2015, aided by technological advancements that made reading easier. As a behavioral economist, she now focuses on human behavior and the environment. She collaborates with local governments, community organizations, and environmental groups, helping them design and implement changes in their messaging and materials to improve effectiveness in areas like recycling and sustainability.

At 58, Yolanda is finally pursuing a PhD. She concluded her speech by encouraging the Class of 2024 to embrace change, persist through failure, and keep moving forward. Failure, she noted, is simply “the plans have changed” spelled backwards.

“Hey, I told you I’m dyslexic!” she joked.