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Presidents Advisory Committee on Women

Featured Women

This page is intended to showcase women from all parts of the UW whose work and presence help create a strong community on campus. Each has been nominated by members of PACW or by other women at the UW, and each was interviewed in person especially for this report. If you would like to nominate a fabulous UW woman (student, staff, or faculty) to be featured on this page, please email PACW.

Currently Featured:

Selma Dillsi, Director of the Associated Students of the University of Washington (ASUW) Women’s Action Commission, is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, majoring in Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, and Social Welfare. Dillsi was born in Saudi Arabia to a Palestinian father and Syrian mother. When she was 4 years old, Dillsi’s parents moved her and her sister Hala, 2 years Dillsi’s elder, to the Tri-Cities in Washington State.

During high school, Dillsi kept herself very busy and active, participating in the Junior Statesmen of America, and serving as president of the National Honors Society during her senior year. As a Junior Statesman, Dillsi had a lot of fun traveling to conventions in Washington State and participating in a mock congress. Dillsi’s passion for advocacy work also blossomed during this time through her work with the Planned Parenthood Action Network. This group encourages using letter writing as a tool to advocate for issues around women’s reproductive rights. While this work fueled Dillsi’s desire to work in advocacy, she had some difficulty meeting others in her area who shared her interests. However, Dillsi felt very fortunate to share her interests with her older sister who was involved in a lot of the same work.

When Dillsi came to the University of Washington in 2005 she continued to explore her interest in student government, advocacy, and women’s rights. She immediately became active in the ASUW and Amnesty International. Her work as a volunteer for ASUW during her freshman and sophomore years transitioned to a paid job as Director of the Women’s Action Commission when she became a junior. Dillsi feels this position is another step in her advocacy work. This Commission, formed in 1969, was the first of the now 8 ASUW Commissions, each founded in response to a student-identified need for outreach to underrepresented and historically repressed groups.

In her position as Director, Dillsi had the opportunity to produce Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, a play written in 1996 in response to the guilt and embarrassment that some women still connect with their bodies and/or their sexuality. Of all her accomplishments thus far at UW, Dillsi is most proud of this production. Working with Director Melissa Aar, Dillsi chose to put 11 women on stage to provide a diverse representation of women on campus. For Dillsi, this production became a spiritual journey, leading to personal growth and increased self awareness. Her main take-away messages from this production were to be proud of who you are and to take a stand against violence and oppression. All proceeds from the show benefited Home Alive, an organization promoting violence prevention.

On a more personal note, Dillsi shared that during her sophomore and junior years at UW, she started to more fully embrace her identity as an Arab-American. In the Tri-Cities where she grew up, Dillsi did not have much opportunity to connect with other Arab-American students. At the UW, she has become active with the Muslim Student Association, building a close knit community and learning to be proud of her heritage. These ties have helped Dillsi find part of herself.

A majority of Dillsi’s family lives in Syria and Jordan where she enjoys visiting with some frequency. Most recently, Dillsi traveled there in summer of 2005. Dillsi notes of her visits to her many family members abroad that they “have so much less but seem so much happier.” Residing in the United States, in addition to her parents, are her two uncles, living in Houston, TX, and her sister, currently a senior at the UW. Dillsi is very close with her sister, and considers her a best friend. Dillsi also feels much gratitude for her parents who have been very supportive and open-minded, raising her to be accepting of others.

Looking toward the future, Dillsi feels fairly confident she will continue her education after college. Some areas of interest in include social work and peace and conflict resolution. She is very excited to continue advocacy work and to encourage others to become involved in social justice issues.



Jean Lee, Facilities Design Manager for the Department of Housing and Food Services, was born in Portland, Oregon, the eldest daughter of Chinese immigrant parents. Her father emigrated from Toisan, China when he was 12 years old to join Lee’s grandfather and work in their Oregon family restaurant. Several years later, in 1947, he returned to China to marry Lee’s mother through an arranged marriage. The two of them moved back to Portland via San Francisco.

Being the eldest child and a first generation American shaped many of Lee’s life experiences. As a child growing up in Portland, Lee adjusted with ease to her bilingual and bicultural world, noting that until kindergarten, she spoke only Cantonese. Lee’s mother instilled in her the love of books and reading, and her father taught her drawing and drafting skills. During high school, with her parents’ encouragement, Lee built on these skills and decided to pursue a college education in design.

Lee graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Interior Architecture in 1972. This five-year program prepared Lee to enter the field of commercial interior design. She began working in that field upon graduation with Portland based architect Robert Wilmsen. In 1976, Lee moved to Seattle in search of a better economic environment. She worked as a draftsperson briefly for several Alaska pipeline general contractors until she was hired by Sea-First Bank as a facilities designer. The man who hired her, UW 2006 Distinguished Alumni honoree Lawney Reyes, was an interior designer by education, but also a well known Native American wood carver and writer. Working with Reyes proved an integral and formative experience for Lee. Through his mentorship, Lee developed tremendous respect for Reyes and learned from him how to be a successful professional in an assimilated culture while maintaining her identity.

Between the years of 1983 and 1986, Lee left Sea-First Bank to have her daughter, Aimee. During this time, Lee balanced the demands of motherhood with working out of her home as an interior design and space planning consultant for several corporate clients. In September of 1986, Lee returned full-time to the workforce when she was hired by the University of Washington as a design coordinator.

Lee feels truly privileged to work at the UW and acknowledges the uniqueness of her job within the design field. As a design coordinator, Lee provides both in-house design services and continued project management, building relationships with the people who use and maintain the spaces she creates. In this role, Lee constantly considers how she can help build an institution that will attract top students, staff, and faculty.

Lee approaches each project with a fresh and open perspective. She enjoys the creative process, and her favorite projects are those that convert spaces that were once mundane into lively, innovative areas that encourage community and group dynamics. She analyzes and carefully programs the client’s present and future needs with particular emphasis on longevity and flexibility.

Lee also enjoys mentoring undergraduate design students, and she sees them as an essential ingredient to a successful housing and food interiors. They acquire a hands-on design studio experience while lending a generational perspective to the projects on the drawing board. Lee hires a design assistant each year, usually a junior or senior from local design schools, and, most recently, from the College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Lee is very supportive of her daughter who graduated from the UW with a biology degree in 2004, and is now studying graphic design. Her husband Stan Desaki, a cost estimator for Paccar Corporation, is a Japanese American who shares many of her cultural experiences growing up as a first-generation American.

Looking forward to her career here at UW, Lee is very excited about the future of new student housing. She views this next phase as an opportunity to contribute to housing design excellence for the next generation and beyond. Her goal is to ensure that this large institution does not look institutional. How lucky we are to have her spark and ingenuity designing for us on our campus.



Neghisty Habties, custodian in Facilities Services, has been working at the University of Washington since December, 1998. Habties was born into a large family in Keren, Eritrea in 1954. She never had the opportunity to finish high school, having to work to help her family. In 1977, she and one of her sisters fled to Sudan to escape war and political unrest. She traveled by camel for 12 days to reach Kasala, Sudan, where she stayed for the next 15 months until she moved to Saudi Arabia to be with her brother who had also left home to escape political strife.

Habties lived in Saudi Arabia for 6 years. She was intending to complete more schooling there, but again, family obligations required her to work. While in Saudi Arabia, Habties participated in the women’s movement by meeting with a secret women’s group once per week to educate women about their rights in an extremely patriarchal society.

During her time in Saudi Arabia, Habties made several trips to Sudan to encourage her mother and sisters to leave that region and move to Germany. On one of those trips, in 1982, she met the man who would become her husband, Seium Mosqhenna. In 1984, Habties was able to help her family relocate to Germany. Shortly after that, in 1985, Habties left Saudi Arabia to visit her soon-to-be husband in Atlanta, Georgia. That visit turned out to be permanent, and on January 27, 1986, Habties and Seium Mosqhenna were married. Habties and her husband have three children, Besherat, age 19, Sabella, age 17, and Daniel, age 15.

Habties enjoys her work at the UW very much. She feels blessed by the supportive relationships she has built with her coworkers, and she feels that they are like family. Habties also takes pride in the work that she does, knowing that she does a good job and that her coworkers appreciate her efforts. Habties also has a second full-time job as a nurse’s assistant at Seattle Medical Rehabilitation Center where she works with patients who are intubated and ventilated. She takes great pride in this work as well, enjoying providing care for people when they are at their most vulnerable. Habties states that she does this work not only for the money, but as a human being to care for people.

Currently, Habties lives with her husband and her children in SeaTac where she bought a house 2 years ago. Her oldest son attends the University of Washington and is currently studying chemistry, although he has not yet determined his major. Her daughter is a junior in high school and aims to be a surgeon. Her younger son is a sophomore in high school and is an excellent student. Habties’ dream is for all her children to attend college and to have happy, successful lives.

Habties has been a United States citizen for 9 years. She visited her home town in Eritrea with her family in 2002. She feels very lucky to be living and raising her family in the U.S. and does not think she will move back to Eritrea. However, she loves to visit her native country. In her free time, Habties loves to cook for her children. Aside from preparing traditional Eritrean dishes, Habties also enjoys making Italian food, especially lasagna.

Habties hopes that when her children are all in college, she can transition to working just one job. She also hopes to be able to travel. When pressed to share advice, Habties stated that she believes in the value of hard work. She believes that most people living in the U.S. do not know struggle. Here, she states, if you are motivated and willing to work hard, you can make a good life for yourself. Habties life is certainly a testament to her philosophy.



Velida (Vee) White, Lecture and Special Events Coordinator in the School of Medicine, has been at the University of Washington since November, 2000. Some of the events she facilitates include the Science in Medicine Lecture Series; the Life Sciences Discovery Fund Information Sessions; The Investigator Needs to Know (ThINK) Series; the Inaugural Seminar Series for the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine (ISCRM); and Dean Paul G. Ramsey’s School of Medicine Address: UW Medicine – 2007 and Beyond. White also works with PhD students in the School of Medicine to organize the Bioscience Seminar Series. White enjoys flawlessly organizing these events, creating the best possible environment for the presenting researchers.

When White first came to the UW from the University of California, Riverside, she experienced culture shock. She had difficulty building a professional network, observing that the UW felt splintered and politically complex. But slowly, White built her professional network by reaching out to a fellow coworker and finding mentors. One mentor of particular significance is Johnanna Price, an 80+ year old woman who exemplifies the values of community. White now feels blessed by the supportive, intelligent, and inspirational community of women she has met at the UW, and feels that as an African American woman, it is especially important to have this solid support system in place.

A key opportunity for White to build her network came when she received her appointment letter from President Emmert to serve on the President’s Advisory Committee on Women (PACW). Vee warmly recalls that receiving this letter made her feel welcomed and appreciated. She has tremendously valued her time serving on PACW, particularly because of the open, accepting, and encouraging environment it fosters among women from varied parts of the UW community. White feels particular pride in working on PACW’s first biennial Report on Women.

White’s personal life is likewise very full. She lives in Woodinville with her husband Jim, has 6 sisters (1 fraternal twin!), 4 brothers, and many nieces, nephews, and grand nieces and nephews. White is also very proud of her 14-year old goddaughter, Tamara, a straight ‘A’ student who has been accepted into the International Baccalaureate program in Henderson, Nevada. Vee’s mother, Jewelee Irving, has been a great source of inspiration throughout her life, and White attributes all of her success in life to her mother.

Looking forward on her career at the UW, White hopes to become even more involved in the University community, serving as a mentor and role model for young African American women starting their careers.



Nancy Woods, Dean of the School of Nursing, has been on the faculty of the School of Nursing since 1978 and Dean since 1998. Originally from Wisconsin, Dean Woods earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire, and then came to Seattle to earn her Master’s degree in Nursing from the University of Washington. Armed with two degrees, Dean Woods began her career practicing hospital-based nursing in Seattle. After a short period of practice in Seattle Dean Woods moved to New Haven, Connecticut with her husband, whom she met in a pre-Starbucks era Seattle coffee shop while earning her Master’s degree. The couple moved to New Haven so that Dean Woods’ husband could begin a post-doctoral fellowship at Yale. While in New Haven, Dean Woods expanded her practical nursing experience to include public health nursing, learning the importance of extending patient care beyond the hospital’s doors. She also began teaching at this time.

Her teaching career continued at Duke University in North Carolina where she accepted a faculty position at the Nursing School. After three years of teaching at Duke, Dean Woods began concurrent work toward her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She was very interested in studying women’s health issues, and for her dissertation, looked into the consequences of the Women’s Movement, just gaining steam at the time, on women’s health. She considered issues such as women juggling employment and parenthood and the effects on their health.

After earning her Ph.D., Dean Woods sought a teaching position in a nursing school with an excellent teaching reputation that would be supportive of a research career. So in September of 1978, she returned to the University of Washington as an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing. While at the UW, Dean Woods continued her research focus on women’s health issues. She became particularly interested in menstrual cycle symptoms and menopause, and she received NIH grants to study those areas. In 1988, Nancy, along with other colleagues in the School of Nursing, secured funding to support post and pre-doctoral students studying women’s health. She thus became the director of the Women’s Health Training Grant. And then in 1989, Dean Woods and colleagues secured a grant to start the Center for Women’s Health Research at the UW. She served as the director of the Center until she became Dean in 1998.

During her career at the University of Washington, Dean Woods taught seminars on women’s health and women’s health and research methods. She worked on two major longitudinal research studies. One study focusing on the menopausal transition in mid-life women began in 1990 and continued for 15 years, called the Seattle Midlife Women’s Health Study. The other study, the Women’s Health Initiative, looked at several outcomes related to hormone replacement therapy, calcium and vitamin D, and low-fat/high fiber diets. In this study, which for Dean Woods' purposes was fundamentally a study of women’s aging, she looked at data associated with frailty that could enable her and her colleagues to predict falls, mortality and fractures in older women.

Dean Woods has enjoyed her career at the University of Washington immensely. In fact, at times during her tenure, she has felt so good about her work that she could not believe she was being paid for it. Dean Woods values her smart and talented colleagues who create a collegial, intellectually stimulating environment. In the School of Nursing especially, she lauds her colleagues for being supportive, collaborative, and competitive in the best way – not with each other, but for the sake of self-improvement and continually striving to do better as a team. She also feels fortunate that she has met colleagues with whom she can solve some of life’s big problems, like how to handle motherhood and a demanding career.

Dean Woods' personal life also brings her great pleasure. Her husband of (almost 40 years) is a faculty member at the University of Washington in the Department of Environmental Health’s Toxicology program. She also has a 27-year old daughter who lives in Ellensburg, WA and works as a preschool teaching assistant. And Dean Woods loves her Border Collie named Marley who makes sure that Nancy gets her daily exercise.

Looking forward to her future at the University of Washington, Dean Woods welcomes the upcoming change of leadership in the School of Nursing when she completes her 10-year appointment as Dean in July, 2008. She plans to take a sabbatical at that time, and then continue with her well-loved research and teaching career.

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