DECEMBER ALUMNI PROFILE: TRANSITIONING FROM “CORRIDORS OF POWER” TO THE CLASSROOM
After almost two decades navigating the complexities of international diplomacy, Sarah Chandler (B.A. ‘88) says that she never planned to have her final chapter of her career focus on providing education to children with developmental disabilities.
“I was striving to move over to the State Department, and when I studied at Berkeley I was expecting to negotiate trade agreements across three continents. Dealing with explosive personalities and helping kids learn how to deal with whatever kind of trauma or challenges they were coping with, none of that was in the cards.”
But today that’s exactly where she finds herself. Sarah credits her experience at Berkeley as formative in how she wants to “give back to kiddos who were less fortunate than I was; getting accepted and affording a top-notch public education was assumed for me.” After living abroad for several years, she has settled in Saint Louis, and is our Midwestern alumni profile for the month of December 2025.
Sarah earned accolades for her work on human rights initiatives with several NGO’s, as well as authoring reports on international relations throughout the 2000’s and 2010’s. But then she walked away from a life of traveling back and forth between Washington and the rest of the world in 2021 to pursue what she calls her "most important work,." as a teacher of students with intellectual disabilities at a charter school in Saint Louis. Her transition wasn't entirely random—during her diplomatic career, Sarah had volunteered weekends at events with different nonprofits that label themselves as helping underserved communities.
"In international relations, success could take years to materialize, if at all," Sarah tells CACC. "Here, I see progress every single day. When a student learns to count change or someone else learns how to manage their huge mood swings, those victories are immediate and tangible."
Sarah leverages her diplomatic skills in unexpected ways, advocating for inclusive education policies at the state level when she can, and building partnerships with local small businesses to create employment opportunities and/or learning opportunities for her students. Sarah thinks that job placement programs for youngsters who can be employable in the workforce are particularly important.
"I spent years trying to make the world better living out of hotel rooms and trying to work my ways within the corridors of power," she says from her home in suburban Saint Louis. "Now I'm doing it with just individual lives and making slow incremental progress, and I've never felt more successful."