Debra Daniels

In Utah, the presence of the patriarchal culture is strongly felt, and violence against women is often both silenced and viewed as a ‘personal’ problem. While this may seem an insurmountable obstacle for many, it simply motivates the work of activist Debra Daniels. As the current director of the University of Utah’s Women’s Resource Center, Debra’s commitment to activism can be traced throughout her life. Her career began as a social worker in Salt Lake City. She served as the Assistant Director of the YWCA of Salt Lake City, which runs the largest battered women’s shelter in the state. Debra later became the Director of Client Services at the Rape Recovery Center, before creating her own organization, Umoja, which is Swahili for ‘unity’. Umoja provides risk reduction and diversity classes to the community in an effort to reduce violence in our culture. Debra has been a longstanding voice for women who have survived assault, and has always focused on issues of racial, economic, and sexual diversity as she speaks out about wide-ranging social problems. See: http://www.sa.utah.edu/women/staff/director.html.
September 2005