Julia Carpenter

The stress of raising three small children while trying to finish my dissertation prompted me to leave the program in 2004 prior to finishing my dissertation, choosing instead to pursue a Masters in Asian Medicine. After graduating in 2007 from the Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College in Berkeley, I became a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist and opened a private practice.  In 2009, I co-founded Berkeley Acupuncture Project, dedicated to making healthcare as affordable and accessible to as many people as possible.  As part of a national multi-stakeholder cooperative (People's Cooperative of Community Acupuncture), the community acupuncture model offers treatments using an affordable sliding scale and strives to make acupuncture schooling and licensing more affordable to encourage more diversity in the field.  I teach at national conferences regularly, while running one of the busiest acupuncture clinics in the country, where we give over 2000 acupuncture treatments each month.  Our clinic is very close to UC Berkeley, and I love seeing so many of my prior academic colleagues come in for help in alleviating their stress!  My three children are all mostly grown now, one still in college, which leaves me more time for traveling, hiking, gardening, and knitting.