Outstanding alumni awards

Outsatnding Feminist Alumni

Hadori Bukle and Rula Thabata quickly became superstars at the Women’s Resource Center. Director Patricia Boyett credits them with helping her build the center from a small office with two student interns in 2015 to a thriving center with 30-plus student staff members each semester that now runs like a company. Just one year after their graduation, they are already making significant impacts in their communities. Ms. Bukle and Ms. Thabata also became close friends and have continued that friendship even though they now live hundreds of miles away from each other. WRC Associate Director of Special Projects Delaney Harper, who worked closely with both Ms. Bukle and Ms. Thabata, was thrilled when they jointly won Outstanding Feminist Alum. As Ms. Harper noted: “Rula is a person whose presence is so powerful and so radiant that she challenges everyone in the room to be their best selves. Hadori’s guidance and mentorship to myself, along with many others at the center, has left me feeling like a more confident and prepared woman. She offers enough support to allow us to advocate for ourselves as she proudly watches us from the sidelines.”

Rula Thabata served as the Associate Director of Programming when she worked at the WRC. During her time at Loyola and beyond, Ms. Thabata has worked on policy and equitable changes for women and working people in Louisiana. She was a student representative on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee since her sophomore year. She then interned as a research assistant for the Institute for Equity and Equality in Education, and she advocated for equal opportunity as part of Students for Education Reform. She has interned with Emerge Louisiana, and the Louisiana Supreme Court’s Judicial Administrator’s Office. Ms. Thabata studied abroad in Ireland and was an Ignacio Volunteer in both the international program in South Africa and Urban Immersion program in New Orleans. For her efforts, she was awarded the 2017 Outstanding Sophomore Student Leader, 2018 Rev. Matteo Ricci, S.J. Diversity Award and 2019 Janet Mary Riley Award for the Advancement of Women's Issues. She was also one of two recipients of the Ignatian Award for Outstanding Senior, the highest honor a university grants to students. rula Thabata

After graduating from Loyola University New Orleans in May 2019, where she finished magna cum laude with a political science major and minors in Middle East Peace Studies and Sociology, she became a fellow in the public policy project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights She began working on national campaigns surrounding education, the Census, and racial justice. Upon returning to New Orleans, she worked on political campaigns for state representatives. As she is passionate about community and equitable care, Ms. Thabata accepted a position as an admission counselor at Tulane University where she focuses on diversity, equity and access. A brilliant student with a passion for civil rights law and public policy, she plans to attend law school in the near future.

The WRC’s Associate Director of the Writing Team, Grace Riddick, considers Ms. Thabata deeply deserving of this award. As Ms. Riddick asserts, “Rula Thabata worked relentlessly for the betterment of the Loyola community as an undergraduate. Now an alum, Rula brings the same persistence and empathy to others in the New Orleans community. Rula is always there to help others and her feminist ideals have made, and continue to make, the world a better place. Rula has become a feminist inspiration to many, myself included, and she will certainly leave you with a fiery passion to make your mark on the world and help others in need.”

Hadori Bukle

Ms. Bukle graduated Magna Cum Laude from Loyola University New Orleans in 2019 with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management and Marketing. During her time at Loyola, she served as Associate Director of the Women’s Resource Center. As associate director, Ms. Bukle helped manage the 30-plus student staff, including the other team leads and student workers. In addition, she coordinated events with over 400 attendees. Additionally, Ms. Bukle is a member of the business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi, and the honor society, Beta Gamma Sigma.

While working at the center, Ms. Bukle mentored several students, including Ava Harold, who became her protege. Ms. Harold has great admiration for Ms. Bukle and credits her passion and exemplary work ethic as contributing greatly to the growth of the center. “In my eyes,” Ms. Harold said, “Hadori is an outstanding example of power, success, leadership, and kindness. Even as an alum, Hadori never backs down from injustice. She treats everyone with respect, and empowers the people around her to be better and rise up to their fullest potential.” Ms. Harold also recalled fondly, “I had the honor of being her coworker and assistant, and I have the even bigger honor of being her friend. She is truly the epitome of this award’s recipient.”

Ms. Bukle is currently a project manager at Aetna, a CVS Health Company within the General Management Development Program. She works in Phoenix, Arizona under the Medicaid Provider Data Services department. Her department is responsible for the configuration and maintenance of provider data within a system used to support claim processing and provider directories. Her biggest project yet involves improving current documentation for Provider Data Services. Within the General Management Development Program, Ms. Bukle is a member of the mentoring, recruiting, and curriculum committee where she is a Rotation 1 Champion. Ms. Buklei is the co-lead of the intern mentoring sub-committee on the mentoring committee. In her mentoring role, she is responsible for creating mentorships for 79 interns. In addition to her membership on the recruiting committee, Ms. Bukle is an active member of the recruiting process improvement sub-committee. Making an impact and promoting social justice continues to be a priority for her. As a member of the Black Colleague Resource Group and co-lead of the GMDP Diversity and Inclusion Workgroup at CVS Health, Ms. Bukle is determined to encourage change for underserved groups.

Dr. Boyett recalls fondly those early days that she worked with Ms. Bukle and Ms. Thabata to begin building the center. She misses their strategy sessions when she marveled as they brought their different talents and perspectives to programs, recruitment, and leadership development. Yet she has enjoyed witnessing how much they have continued to flourish and impact the world in positive ways since they graduated from Loyola. She is also grateful to them for the many ways they recruited phenomenal students to work at the center and mentored them. Thus, the center continues to grow under the magnificent group of students who continue to work at the WRC. In addition, as Dr. Boyett and the students at the center seek to sustain connections to amazing WRC alum like Ms. Thabata and Ms. Bukle, the center grows every year beyond Loyola.