Denni Dianne Woodward

Life-long Bay Area resident, Denni Dianne Woodward (Mescalero Apache) first joined Stanford in the mid-1980s after working in the local Sequoia Union High School District’s federally funded Indian Education district-wide program center—and then with a five-county consortium of Native Employment and Training programs in the Bay Area where she met several Native Stanford students. Previously earning her Bachelor of Arts in Art History with a minor in Anthropology from San José State University, she transitioned to higher education, joining Stanford’s Student Affairs division.

Her early work in Student Affairs’ Finance and Human Resources overlapped with Stanford’s Native student population, and in 1988 she became part of the original staff of the Native American Cultural Center (NACC). Following the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, when the only post quake display space available was the Art Gallery across from History Corner, she curated “Our Art, Our Voices: Native American Cultural Perspectives”—spotlighting 12 Stanford Alumni in celebration of the Stanford American Indian Organization’s 25th Anniversary. She has since contributed to Cantor Arts Center installations and other on-campus displays--both actual and virtual exhibits--that highlighted and preserved indigenous history at Stanford.

Today, with more than three decades of service to the university and the Native community, Denni serves as the NACC’s Assistant Dean and Associate Director. She is passionate about consensus building within our community on campus, and her work focuses on creating opportunities for students, organizations, alumni, and members of the American Indian Staff Forum to come together in what is affectionately referred to as the “Stanford Native Family.”