Wendi Williams

Wendi Williams, PhD
2021 Div. 35 President

Interviewed by Isabelle Orozco

1. If you could give your younger self advice, what would it be?

To my younger self… I would tell her to keep going. It is what I tell young people, including my nieces and godsons, as well as my students and my peers. I believe that we have to stay committed and engaged in our interests and go deep in that direction to fully develop our potential, whatever that will be. Especially now, as our ideas of work and life contributions are being redefined and the landscape for how our work can happen is changing. With this lack of predictability, or the portal so many of us are now living with, I feel that young people, should go out boldly as themselves, unfiltered and unchanged. Our best contribution to the world is the whole truth of who we are. I want that for my younger self and I want that for all of us, especially the youth now.

2. How important is it to be a mentor?

Being a mentor is one of the most important things that I do. I was so blessed to have good, loving, and invested mentors as a child and it has helped me to discern when someone has taken an genuine interest in me as an adult. Those early mentor relationships also serves as a guide for how I allow myself to enter the lives and development process of others. I see my role as mentor as sacred. I feel responsible to my mentees and try to hold space for them to process the integration of their professional and personal selves. 

3. In this period of racial reckoning, what advice do you have to people who want to make a change in their communities?

I would share the advice provided by Alicia Garza. I am reading her new book, "The Purpose of Power". In it she simply says that if you want to get involved in making a social change, find the people that are already doing that work and join them. Movements and change are predicated on relationships, not would-be saviors or hashtags.

4. Who have been your role models? What about them do you admire?

My role models are literary truth-tellers. I love Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, and James Baldwin. As a young reader and developing poet, I was drawn to their prose and use of language. As an adult, I realize I was drawn to their truth. The fact that they told it and did so during a time when they did is so remarkable. As we well know, their work remains salient for our current moment. Their words continue to light a path for our way forward.

I also appreciate forward-thinking, brave, wildish-natured women. Two whose life stories give me courage to live out loud are Lorraine Hansberry and Zora Neale Hurston.

5. What words of wisdom did your mother/grandmothers/aunts share with you?

My mother, Althea Louise Odom always says, “When you know better you do better.” While that it is not always true, it is the standard by which I hold others accountable in their relationships with me. I speak my truth and expect their actions toward me to fall in line. Otherwise they may get left behind.

My grandmother, Aretha Odom, would say, “If you like it, I love it.” I am certain this is because she did not intend to allow herself to be bothered by other people’s actions she judged to be out of sync with her values. This is true for me as well. I also appreciate my grandmother’s non-attachment in regards to the life choices we are all authorized to make for themselves. She did not impose on another person’s personal freedom and I do not either. 

My auntie, Clireta Mae Odom, who passed during 2020, would always tell us when faced with a difficult decision, “That’s L-I-F-E.” As a woman and a Black woman, she knew that there were realities of my life that would be unfair. She did not want my hope or joy to wilt under disappointment. In her view, and that of all the adults who had a hand in rearing me, that disappointment needed to be regularized so that I would keep on going. I try to live my life according to their hopes for me.