Sutapa Basu, PhD (she/her)
Executive Director and Affil. Assistant Professor
Click to read more about the director
贰尘补颈濒:听sbasu@uw.edu
Phone: (206) 685-1090
Maria Abando (she/her)
Assistant Director of Making Connections Program聽
Born and raised in Tacoma, WA, Maria joins Making Connections with a deep passion for youth advocacy and educational justice. She聽 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. 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 Special Projects
As Assistant Director of Special Projects, Safiya utilizes her experience as a scholar of cultural and disability studies, an instructor in the University鈥檚 Interdisciplinary and Expository Writing Programs, a teaching assistant for the American Ethnic Studies Department, a tutor for the City of Seattle鈥檚 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, 鈥淭he 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鈥檚 Center is an organization dedicated to and built on these ideals. I am proud to join the Center鈥檚 team and to be of service to students, staff, faculty, and community members.鈥�
Email: womens@uw.edu
AM Weatherford, PhD聽 (he/him)
Making Connections Program Coordinator
Dr. Alan-Michael (AM) Weatherford has been teaching and researching at the UW since 2012. At the Women’s Center he supports program development and coordination with the Making Connections program.
Email: womens@uw.edu