Dechen Tsering

Dechen Tsering a Health Services Program Specialist for the City of Berkley.

Previously, Tsering was the Community Resources Director at Community Health for Asian Americans (CHAA), a nonprofit in Oakland, CA that promotes behavioral health and wellness of underserved communities. She has over 15 years of experience in international development, program management, grantmaking, women’s rights advocacy and community health education. She served as the full-time volunteer President of the Tibetan Association of Northern California (TANC) in the Bay Area from 2008-2010. Between 2005-2008, she served as the Program Officer for Asia and Oceania at the Global Fund for Women, one of the largest grantmaking foundations supporting women’s rights groups worldwide. From 1999 to 2005, Dechen worked to prevent blindness in India, Nepal, Tibet and Cambodia as the Program Manager for Seva Foundation in Berkeley. Following graduate school, Dechen spent two years (1994-1995), working at the Tibetan Delek Hospital in Dharamsala, India during which she initiated the first HIV/AIDS education programs for Tibetan high school students at TCV and residents of Tibetan settlements.

Educated in a Christian missionary school in Darjeeling, India, Dechen moved to the United States at age 18 to complete high school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; B.A. in Environmental Studies from Antioch College in Ohio; and Masters in Public Health (MPH) from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans. Raised in Nepal, India and the United States, Dechen has traveled extensively on job assignments particularly in Asia and the Pacific Islands, including three trips to the Tibetan Plateau. She is fluent in Tibetan, Hindi, Nepali, Newari and English.