2024-2025 President: Rochelle L. Williams

Rochelle L. Williams, Executive Director of Graduate Fellowships for STEM Diversity and a Co-Principal Investigator for the ARC Network, is this year’s President of the WEPAN Board of Directors, who are responsible for defining WEPAN’s mission and for providing overall leadership and strategic direction to the organization.

Like so many others, her interest in creating social change in engineering was piqued by personal experience. While taking a graduate level physics course during her PhD program, she was the only Black woman in a room of white men. “I was asked, ‘Are you sure you’re in the right class?’,” she remembers. “I had seen this exact same scene in the film Hidden Figures, which took place decades earlier. So much time had passed but the same experience was still happening.” 

She has a trifecta of goals for her term as president, which are influenced by her past experiences working in the non-profit sector. First, she wants to continue the work inherited from the previous two office holders, Jamie Huber Ward and Beth Anne Johnson, in finalizing WEPAN’s strategic plan. Second, she wants to support organizational culture and staff development. “Sometimes in the non-profit space, there can be a focus on the mission, to the detriment of those people who make sure the mission happens. Having policies and procedures is important, but have they taken the voice of staff into account? I want to make sure our staff feel supported as they conduct the day-to-day business of our organization.”

Third, she wants to think about ways to diversify WEPAN’s member base, especially at a time when potential academic and industry partners are working with scarce resources and have to navigate a confusing web of anti-DEI legislation.

“How do we remain at the forefront as academic and nonprofit leaders? How can we protect our work from politicians holding a skewed viewpoint of DEI, and how do we use our voice on behalf of our members?”

She thinks one way to do that is through professional societies, entities with which she is very familiar, having previously served as Chief Programs Officer for the National Society of Black Engineers and as Project Director for the ARC Network when it was housed under the Association of Women in Science. Under her leadership, WEPAN and its NSF-funded initiative, the ARC Network, is hosting its first ever Emerging Issues Workshop this fall, which will address the role of professional societies in today’s political and cultural climate. “How do we, as professional societies, go from being gatekeepers to being gatebreakers? How can we be an  organization that speaks on behalf of their members, an organization that sticks up for its mission?”

As WEPAN president, she ultimately wants to be remembered as someone who worked for the liberation of everyone. “You can’t work within a system that isn’t designed for you. My hope is to dismantle a small part of that system, to make it possible for all people to thrive.”