It was a gathering co-sponsored by O, The Oprah Magazine that recognized women of promise, those who seek solutions for the overlooked.

Berkeley resident Anjuli Sherin, 28, was among them, featured in the November issue of O Magazine as one of 80 emerging women leaders invited to the Women Rule! leadership camp.

"I picked up O Magazine and saw an advertisement for the leadership project," Sherin said. "This was exactly what I needed."

The camp was sponsored through a partnership between the magazine and the White House Project, a New York-based group dedicated to female advancement.

It was at Life Empowerment Action Program, known as LEAP, in Oakland where Sherin acquired the background that led to her own non-profit idea: Leap of Love, which aims to promote and expand mental health programs in third-world countries, especially those affected by disaster.

"The place where I want to focus my energy is the area of mental health," she said. "It's because of LEAP that I realized that I wanted to take what they had given me and give it back."

After being selected from a pool of more than 3,000, Sherin traveled to New York City for the three-day camp taught by prominent women leaders from throughout the U.S.

"It's no secret that now is a time when women's strengths are urgently needed," said Sara Crabbe, senior manager for public relations at Hearst Magazines, which operates O Magazine, in a statement. "Sherin will take what she learned at Women Rule! and implement it into her personal project."

In the five years since Sherin moved to the Bay Area from her native Islamabad, Pakistan, reconciling need and opportunity has been a common theme in her work.

After receiving her degree in integral counseling psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2005, Sherin worked as a family and marriage therapist intern at a practice in Oakland. She also acquired certifications in hypnotherapy and Reiki, an alternative holistic treatment.

Sherin won the 2007 eWomenNetwork Emerging Leader of the Year Award from the Texas-based nonprofit that supports women's issues, but said she still needed to improve her leadership skills.

"People can recognize you as a leader, but that isn't enough-you need the connections and the tools," Sherin said.

She said the leadership skills she developed at the camp would impact the development of her nonprofit.

The purpose of Leap of Love is to reach the women and children in disaster-afflicted areas who are neglected by top-down management strategies, Sherin said.

Sherin also stressed the need to mend the gap between what is already done from the top and those who suffer at the bottom of society. Her mix of classical therapy, alternative treatment and empathy defines her intentions for Leap of Love.

"Focusing on mental health is an important part of any reconstruction," Sherin said. "For example, when aid workers' money needs to be funneled into what is exactly happening to the people, so much money goes to the military or to government reconstruction."

In the midst of such enormous ambition, Sherin always remembers that what she learned from others along the way is what she has to pass on.

"What really got to me is that there are pieces that are missing ... we all have these feelings and these thoughts that are craving to be heard."

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