From Illinois Tech Magazine: Breaking the Cycle

These are the issues that have been at the forefront of Sodiqa Williams’s mind for more than a decade, things that have intersected through her personal and professional lives:

Mass incarceration. Race in the United States. Equity.

They have driven Williams (LAW ’11) hard since her undergraduate days at Princeton University. They are also the reasons that when she was ready for a career change in 2014, the Safer Foundation was a logical landing spot.

“I am of community,” says Williams, who is the foundation’s general counsel and vice president of external affairs. “I’ve lived in all parts of the city. While I wasn’t born in the city of Chicago, I’ve been here most of my adult life, and I spent part of my childhood here because my father is a retired Chicago police officer. I’ve had all kinds of experiences that weren’t necessarily good with police. The father of my kids? He’s incarcerated. He was a high school sweetheart. We had been together for 13 years. I saw the challenges that he faced.”

More than six years into her tenure at Safer—a nonprofit founded in 1972 that aims to end the cycle of recidivism through training and assisting those with arrest or conviction records learn the skills to find careers—it is evident that Williams’s passion remains as strong as ever.

Read more on the Illinois Tech Magazine website. 

Photo: Rena Naltsas/ Chicago Lawyer