Generosity runs deep in Sobrato household
The name Sobrato is almost synonymous with philanthropy in Silicon Valley. You could fill a hefty directory just listing all the nonprofit organizations, schools and performing arts groups that have been supported by that family over the past few decades.
SantaClara University would certainly be on that list. There’s already a Sobrato residence hall at SCU and the new Sobrato Campus for Science and Innovation is nearing completion. But the donation Santa Clara announced Tuesday isn’t aimed at technology or science or putting up a new campus building. It’s about helping kids who are in crisis.
Sheri Sobrato Brisson and her husband, Eric Brisson, are making a donation to fund a seniorlevel professorship for child and adolescent mental health at SCU’s School of Education and Counseling Psychology, as well as supporting research and public outreach activities in that department. The exact amount of the seven-figure gift is not being disclosed, but SCU says it is the largest donation for an endowed chair in the university’s history.
“This will allow us to recruit a national leader in the field of childhood and adolescent health,” Santa Clara University President the Rev. Kevin O’Brien said. “This is an area that’s been very important in Sheri’s own life and this is just a very concrete expression of that.”
Sobrato Brisson, who received her master’s degree in counseling psychology from Santa Clara University, survived brain cancer when she was in her 20s. Since then, she’s devoted much of her life to helping kids with chronic illnesses or life-threatening conditions, including through the Digging Deep Project, a resilience-building program for youth that she founded. And her experiences have provided her with a first-hand look at the mental impact that physical illness can have on young people.
“There is a real undersupply of trained therapists who deal with child and adolescent mental health, specifically,” she said in an interview. “I know that because I’ve walked in the mental health space and led support groups. There’s a real gap in services.”
At a time when youth mental health is on many minds during the COVID-19 pandemic, Santa Clara University officials say the gift will have a lasting impact for years to come that will spread far beyond the Bay Area.
“Over 50 percent of young people in the United States will have experienced a diagnosable mental illness by the time they reach the age of 18,” said Sabrina Zirkel, dean of the School of Education and Counseling Psychology. “Sheri and Eric’s gift will enable us to hire a leading scholar and expand our curriculum in this area, enabling us to build a specialization in child and adolescent mental health for our students so that they emerge from our program among the best-prepared therapists in the country to work with children and adolescents.”
While this is Sobrato Brisson’s first major contribution to Santa Clara University, she has been part of a long family tradition of philanthropy. A founding trustee of the Sobrato Family Foundation, she and her husband also started Resonance Philanthropies to support their own family interests including environmental and artistic causes. Sobrato Bisson’s philanthropic outlook certainly has been influenced by her parents — Sue and John A. Sobrato — but she says it goes back even farther to her grandmother, Ann Sobrato.
“Her passion was hospitals, as is mine,” she said. “She was a ‘pink lady’ — that’s what they called volunteers — at the veteran’s hospital and Stanford children’s hospital. So as soon as I was 16, I wanted to do the same thing. One value in our family is not just give back, but give yourself. We’re hands-on philanthropists.”
It’s not quite the same as being a teenaged candy striper or getting in the trenches to raise dollars for a struggling nonprofit, but the donation to Santa Clara, she said, was an opportunity to push something forward where a need existed.
“I’m concerned that kids don’t get help early enough, that they have to be in a total point of crisis. But if there’s a way to support early intervention, they could be helped before they reach that point,” she said.
“COVID has brought this to the forefront today, but it’s really beyond COVID. It’s about the importance of recognizing the emotional needs of young people.”