Sheri Sobrato Brisson

Sheri Sobrato Brisson and her husband, Eric Brisson, are making a donation to fund a senior-level 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. 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. 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.