2017 Pursuit of Inclusion Staff Award Recipient: Donna Hawxhurst

It is our honor to award this year’s Pursuit of Inclusion Staff Award to Donna Hawxhurst. She is considered by many to be a mentor, a leader, and a role model in demonstrating inclusivity and social justice in the course of her work. Donna has worked with many students who are now thriving in their career fields and have often returned to let her know how much her teaching has allowed them to work with a much broader community, providing them with skills to work with individuals from lived experiences beyond their own.

She has worked in the Women’s Resource Center for more than 20 years. One of her colleagues noted that “She has been a model for our team to engage in difficult conversations, owning and recognizing our own challenges and short comings in relation to diversity and inclusion. It has allowed our team to put into practice the very concepts we ask our students to embody.”

Donna was one of the original founders of the Feminist Multicultural Counselors Training Program, a very sough after program that teaches counselors in training the value of empowering individuals by working from a strength based model that affirms diversity and inclusion as a primary focus for healing and encourages clients to bring their entire selves into the healing space.

She served as the Collective Coordinator for the Association of Women in Psychology, a national organization, where she and her colleagues created an ongoing workshop series entitled “White Women Unlearning Racism.” She was also one of the founding members of a local community group called “White Women Working on Racism and Equity”, where for more than ten years they provided a space for white women to look at their own racial socialization, to study the history of white supremacy and racism, and to develop the skills and voice to challenge it in their own lives and community.