My Ripple Effect – Taufika Islam Williams

The annual Sisterhood Dinner, hosted by the Council on the Status of Women (CSW), the Women’s Center, and the Office of Equal Opportunity, took place on February 24, 2025. This year’s theme was “The Ripple Effect” — just as a smooth stone cascades across the water, creating ripples in a pond, so too do small acts of change. 

At first seemingly isolated and inconsequential, these small actions build momentum and magnitude to carry inspiration and good works further. Students, faculty and staff from the NC State community shared their stories of how ripples in their lives have impacted their trajectories. CSW chair Taufika Islam Williams was one of the inspiring storytellers at this year’s event. Read on for her ripple story:

My Story:

As I reflect on the theme of the 2025 Sisterhood Dinner, I too feel the ripple effect — an unbroken current of resilience and aspirations — flowing through the generations of women in my family. Bound by mitochondrial DNA, as well as a legacy of shared dreams and quiet perseverance, we carry forward in ripples the hopes of those who came before us. 

My maternal grandmother, the daughter of one of only two college graduates in all of northern Bangladesh in 1919, longed to become a physician. But in 1940s Bangladesh, even her enlightened father could provide only a high school education — far beyond what most girls received — before she was married and devoted herself to family life. Yet, the ripple of her ambition did not end with her. 

She nurtured a love of learning in her children, planting the seeds of a future she could not fully realize for herself. My mother and her peers carried that ripple forward, expanding its reach. She longed to study political science and shape public policy. She made it to college, but after Bangladesh’s independence in 1971, the societal climate led her to marriage before she could pursue her dreams. 

Instead, she poured her aspirations into her family, quietly propelling her husband and two children toward their doctorates. Both my grandmother and mother, devoted homemakers, would sometimes wonder what might have been. Still, they chose to look ahead, sending ripples of hope and ambition forward, believing the next generation would go further. 

I earned my Ph.D. in analytical chemistry just six months after my grandmother’s passing, becoming the first woman on either side of my family to attain a terminal degree — one of the many ripples she set in motion. Now, my generation carries this legacy forward, as my daughter and other girls in her generation of the family dream even bigger, standing on the shoulders of the women before them, ready to expand this ever-growing ripple. May we all continue to nurture and expand these ripples in our own beautiful ways.

Taufika is wrapping up her year as chair of CSW, and chair-elect Karen Sims-Harrell is set to take the reins for the 2025-26 academic year. Plans for next year’s Sisterhood Dinner are already underway, and CSW is planning many more exciting events and learning opportunities that are open to everyone on campus. Learn more about CSW here.