Search The Archive

And like many alumni, Kaitlyn Johnke’s

Following her graduation from Oakland Tech, Rockridge resident Kaitlyn Johnke lived in Senegal under the auspices of Global Citizen Year (GCY). In a “bridge year” program, par- ticipants live and work with local residents of cities in Africa and Latin America on projects in education, technology, health and the envi...

resources were, took on some responsibility in my host family, and came to understand, for the most part, a new language. I had friends to make jokes with, a family to Kaitlyn Johnke with members of her host family in Senegal. /Kaitlyn Johnke worriedly wonder where I was or if I were sick, neighbors that insisted I stay to eat, and a community that yelled out my Senegalese name, Mariama Diallo, and not toubab or toubaa...

By Judith Doner Berne

by Judith Doner Berne She graduated Oakland Tech in June. But unlike most of her Class of 2013, Rockridge teen Kaitlyn Johnke, who lives down the street from me, will delay going to college. Instead, Kaitlyn applied for and was accepted into Global Citizen Year, an eight- month program designed to give recent high school graduates a Peace Corps-style experience b...

By Judith Doner Berne

...rom Rockridge. Although she was nervous, Kaitlyn has travelled abroad without her mom, Beth, and younger sister, Kelsey, before. She spent two weeks in Guatemala in 2009 and in Borneo in 2012 through a program sponsored by the Oakland Zoo. Kaitlyn Johnke, Global Citizen Year participant. /J. Berne Abby Falik, founder, Global Citizen Year. /Abby Falik Judy Berne welcomes your comments and column ideas at judyberne@att.net. For more information on Global Citizen Year, go to globalcitizenyear...

...July 31 after a long battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). She was 81. Like the forward-thinking person she was, Correll decided when she could no longer fight the disease, availing herself of California’s “right Photo: Kaitlyn Johnke — compassion, understanding, and concern for others — characterized my dear friend.” Already a Rockridge resident, in 1991 she inherited the home of her parents, Alice Correll and the renowned print artist Richard

...r subset, she explained, hadn’t been told they were sperm donor children in order to by Judith Doner Berne What if you woke up one morning to discover that you had 68 half- sisters and brothers…and counting? That’s kind of what happened to Kaitlyn Johnke, Rockridge born and bred, who grew up down the street from me. Her mom, Beth

My neighbor Kaitlyn Johnke, 24, was a research volunteer in a rural town in Sierra Leone when the nonprofit she was working for told her to return home due to the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Five days later, she began her 50-hour journey, returning to her Rockridg...

... who do not have the privilege of taking needed precautions or have limited access to health care. For all of us, I eagerly await the day that we can go on to a new “normal.” n On the last leg of her journey, from Seattle to San Francisco, Kaitlyn Johnke had the plane mostly to

By Goldman Sachs

... fourth year; 100 students (up from the 11 who began the program) had been selected to go to rural villages in Brazil, Ecuador and Senegal to live with families and work with other nonprofits to support local projects; and one of those was Kaitlyn Johnke, an Oakland Tech graduate and the program’s first student from Rockridge.

Even during a rare moment at home, Kaitlyn Johnke is focused on her senior project which is rooted in her Global Citizen Year in Senegal.

Johnke, is a single mom. And Kaitlyn knew from an early age that she had an anonymous sperm donor just as her younger sister, Kelsey, now a senior at Oakland Tech, knew she had been adopted from China. In fact, they went as a family in 2009 to visit Kels...

Courtesy of the Johnke Family. Family “Likely I have hundreds of half-siblings out there, some of who don’t know they are sperm donor children or aren’t interested in their potential genetic connections,” she hypothesized. Although a few of her half-siblings have met wi...