Our team

Sutapa Basu, PhD (she/her)

Executive Director and Affil. Assistant Professor

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Email: sbasu@uw.edu
Phone: (206) 685-1090

Devoni Whitehead, MPA (she/they)

Administrator, Program Operations 

Devoni had received her Master’s in Public Administration at the UW Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, where she specialized in Social policy, and conducted a capstone evaluation and policy analysis on the Guaranteed Basic Income Pilot in King County. She utilized her time at UW to hold student leadership positions, creating dedicated spaces to enrich the learning experience for students. Before coming to the  UW Women’s Center as the Administrator, Devoni worked in Indigenous data sovereignty, facilitating the access to vital community information to tribes through the use of statistical analysis and community-centered data collection. 

As the child of an immigrant family, Devoni’s passions for social justice and advocacy stemmed from witnessing how rising sea levels, typhoons, and floods devasted her mother’s home country. As a Neurodivergent Black Filipina, Devoni is not only committed to highlighting the voices of all intersecting communities, but curating spaces that empower, uplift, and foster community-centered connections. 

In her free time, Devoni is a visual artist that creates pieces of art that explores topics of environmental racism, social justice, and community care. You can also find Devoni roller skating, cooking with loved ones, and taking care of her guinea pig, Pumpkin. 

Sarah Nguyen (she/they)

Assistant Director of Leadership Program and Advancement 

Maria Abando (she/her)

Assistant Director of Making Connections Program 

Born and raised in Tacoma, WA, Maria joins Making Connections with a deep passion for youth advocacy and educational justice. She  applies over five years of experience as a community and electoral organizer in various local and national campaigns, political action committees, and nonprofit programs. A common thread throughout her work has been accessibility in education. As Maria states, “Through education, we strengthen our communities’ abilities to explore, collaborate and find solutions to the shared problems of our world. And once we are rooted in knowledge, and we come together across differences with our voices, stories, talents, and resources, we have the collective power needed to build movements that work towards the liberation of oppressed and marginalized peoples everywhere”. Maria knows firsthand that addressing educational disparities with youth and girls of color is a necessary step towards antiracist workplaces and communities. She graduated from the UW in 2017 with a B.S. in Biology, and felt that having support in school was especially essential in environments and classes where very few people came from backgrounds like hers – low-income, first-generation students, and immigrant families. Maria’s involvement in a similar pipeline program as a high schooler helped make her success possible. She found community support while working with the Black Student Union and Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity and learned how to utilize her perspective as a Black and Filipina woman in her work after graduating. She has stayed connected to the UW through serving on President Cauce’s Minority Community Advisory Committee. In her free time, Maria is also a visual artist who enjoys balancing her volunteer and community activism with creativity, holistic joy, and lifelong learning.

Email: womens@uw.edu

Safiya Karmy-Jones, PhC (she/her)

Assistant Director of Returning and Non-Traditional Student Program and Special Projects

As assistant director of the Re-Entry/Non-Traditional Student program and special projects, Safiya utilizes her experience in teaching, advising, tutoring, and mentoring non-traditional students of all backgrounds. This experience includes working as an instructor in the University’s Interdisciplinary and Expository Writing Programs, a teaching assistant for the American Ethnic Studies Department, a tutor for the City of Seattle’s Upward Bound program, and a volunteer educator for the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound.

Safiya credits who she is today as well as her academic and professional passions to the communities and people that raised her, most centrally the stories and convictions of her sitty (paternal grandmother), whose teachings were deeply informed by her status as a Palestinian refugee. Safiya is also proud to be the sibling of an autistic self-advocate, her brother, to whose example she owes her identity as a disability studies scholar. Both of these role models impressed upon Safiya the importance of stories, history, and education from a young age.

As Safiya states, “The people I love taught me to be someone who strives for access and equity in my scholarship, professional work, and personal life. In my experience, the Women’s Center is an organization dedicated to and built on these ideals. I am proud to join the Center’s team and to be of service to students, staff, faculty, and community members.”

Email: karmys@uw.edu

Danielle M. Hickman, MPA (she/her)

Grant Writer

Danielle is an MA student at the University of Washington’s School of Urban Studies in the Community Planning program. She grew up in Tacoma, Washington, and is the first in her family to attend college; she wants to set a good example for her daughter. She received her BA and MPA from Evergreen State College with an emphasis on social equity and a background in sociology. Danielle hopes to build a strong relationship with the University of Washington to obtain her PH.D. Her academic interest included community-based research, urban education, social determinants of health, and planning for equity. Her research has focused on the topics and issues around community engagement, housing, healthcare equity, poverty, education, outdated policy, and policy revision. Danielle wants to be an influential advocate for social justice and change through the lens of equity. Some of her experience in grant writing includes writing a grant for a multilingual computer literacy program and a music program for underserved and marginalized community members in the Seattle area. She hopes to become an expert in community planning and analysis of community policy and believes that with all the uncertainties and ongoing issues, more innovative policies are needed more than ever.

Email: dmh253@uw.edu