Here’s to the Women Who Impacted Members of the GW Community - 2026 Edition

I want to highlight Yanlei (Sue) Su, my classmate in the Fall 2024 M.S. in Sport Management cohort. Sue always helps others without expecting anything in return. She is proactive about collecting information and sharing it with the community. She has strong leadership and brings people together, encouraging Chinese sport management students, not only at GW, to connect and support each other. She regularly shares job-related information and offers practical guidance on academics, daily life, housing, and career preparation.

Sue also leads through action. As a former student-athlete, she achieved strong athletic performance in China and earned many national-level awards. More importantly, she has transformed her athletic experience into service. During her undergraduate years, she organized free, community-focused swim instruction, teaching more than 1,000 people. After coming to the U.S., she has continued this mission by offering free swimming instruction to students. Through her, I learned more about improving my butterfly technique.

Sue is the manager for GW Division I Swimming & Diving and head coach for GW Club Swim, and she volunteers at major sport events. She has influenced my life goals: I want to grow in the sport field and give back through sport, just as she does.

Watching my wife, Brianna Murphy, become a mother this winter has been one of the great privileges of my life. I've long had a front-row seat to see the manner in which she cares for people, whether she knows them or not. As a highly skilled and diligent surgical resident, she always goes the extra mile for her patients, no matter how tired she may be herself. While it's been no surprise to me that she takes the same approach caring for and nurturing our newborn daughter, I am still in awe of her every day. It gives me the greatest of joys that my little girl will grow up under the same roof as a real-life Superwoman.

I would like to highlight my mother for all the good she has done me. Not only does she serve as a role model for me since she is extremely hard working and ambitious, being the primary moneymaker in the house, but she also supported me when I started to deteriorate in my mental health. Not only did she immediately seek treatment for my eating disorder, but she was brave enough to share her own experience and delve into how to help our family as a whole. With my father, she is crucial to my support system and a model for who I want to be.

I am who I am because of my mother, the late Claudia Anyaso. My mom was a career diplomat, working mother of four, and a mentor to many. She was a civil rights activist and a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She helped desegregate the Northwood Shipping Plaza in Baltimore and was active in voting registration efforts. In 2015, she, along with fellow alumni, was recognized by her alma mater Morgan State as a civil rights pioneer and bestowed a Honorary Doctor of Law Degrees. Claudia also served our country through her service with the United States Information Agency (USIA) and the U.S. State Department as a civil and foreign service officer. She served in Washington D.C., Nigeria, Haiti, Niger and at the Pentagon in the Joint Chiefs of Staff office from 2000 to 2002. A graduate of Morgan State and American University, she also attended the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. After 41 years of service, Claudia retired from diplomatic service in 2009. My mom showed me how to be a leader in the workplace, show up for your family and serve your community with conviction, heart and humor.

Elizabeth Butler, my grandmother’s sister, was born in 1902.  She became by any estimation an ordinary woman.

At just four years old, her life had been upended when her mother died and her nearly blind father paid $1 to have her admitted to an orphanage in Syracuse, NY. Later, life brought new challenges when she became a single mother. Year after year she worked tirelessly to make ends meet. Aunt Betty’s struggle continued into retirement, when her $125 Social Security check was barely enough to cover food and rent. Through her 70s she worked at Goodwill.

At every turn, my Aunt Betty faced hardship. Yet most years, she still found a way to tuck $20 into my birthday card. She was generous beyond her means, and happier for it.

I never forgot her small acts of extraordinary kindness.

Decades later, in her memory, I founded The Aunt Betty Fund, a Washington, D.C.–based charity dedicated to reducing student debt through scholarships and grants.

Elizabeth Butler had no idea the impact she would have, far beyond her hometown, and for generations to follow.

I want to highlight my Nana, who was part of the Richmond 34. In 1960, she was one of 34 African American students arrested for participating in a sit-in that challenged segregation at a whites-only lunch counter at Thalhimers Department store in Downtown Richmond, Virginia. At a time when simply sitting down in the wrong place could lead to being arrested, she chose dignity over honor, as her father did not want her to participate.

Through my studies, my research and my work, I carry forward the foundation she laid for me. In honoring her legacy, I remain committed to preserving and amplifying the voices, histories and cultural contributions of African Americans so that future generations will know the power and resilience embedded in our stories. I am also one of the producers for an upcoming docudrama about the Richmond 34, “Richmond 34: The Silent Victory,” which is set to release this year.

Because of her, I carry a deeper sense of pride in where I come from and a stronger commitment to using my voice. She helped me see that resistance is not always loud or dramatic; sometimes it is as simple and powerful as refusing to move.