From Comet to Changemaker: Alum’s Journey of Impact
By: Liaa Kumar | June 5, 2025
Carla Ramazan BA’21 was always drawn to public service. As a high school student in Nevada, she spent four years engaged with the policy debate team and Model U.N. and discovered an interest in community engagement and public speaking.
A high school counselor encouraged Ramazan to apply to The University of Texas at Dallas’ Eugene McDermott Scholars Program, a full-ride undergraduate merit scholarship program with a strong emphasis on leadership and service. Ramazan applied, and her first visit to Dallas was for a gathering of award finalists.
“Throughout the whole weekend, the way that McDermott staff and students treated me really highlighted that college at UTD would look really different from anywhere else,” Ramazan said. “There was a level of personalized attention from professors and community members that was definitely unique to UT Dallas.”
Once on campus as a political science major, Ramazan wasted no time finding ways to make an impact. During a freshman class, she learned about former Texas Sen. Wendy Davis.
“Reading about [Davis’] famous filibuster in our state and local government class was the coolest thing ever,” she said. “UT Dallas was missing an organization that had a wide campus presence and focused on things such as menstrual equity, preventing sexual violence on campus, abortion rights, etc. So, it felt like there was a great need to really invest in this chapter.”
As a sophomore, Ramazan launched the UTD chapter of Deeds Not Words, a nonprofit advocacy group founded by Davis to mobilize young people ― especially women, LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color ― in the political process. Ramazan quickly discovered a great deal of interest and excitement around the campus effort.
“I think that further spoke to the fact that people were looking for a platform to organize around these issues, and Deeds Not Words fortunately gave people a way to do that,” she said.
Under her leadership, Deeds Not Words participants organized campuswide events on women’s rights, produced educational videos on consent for student orientation programs and testified at the Texas Capitol in favor of reproductive rights. At the same time, Ramazan volunteered with various political campaigns, served as Student Government vice president and represented the University on the UT System Student Advisory Council.
Her efforts earned her the prestigious Harry S. Truman Scholarship during her junior year ― one of the nation’s top awards for students pursuing public service careers. She was only the third student at UT Dallas to receive the distinction. As part of the scholarship, Ramazan interned with the National Homelessness Law Center in Washington, D.C., working on awareness campaigns about the systemic challenges facing unhoused people.
In her final year at UTD, Ramazan was named both Student Leader of the Year and Outstanding Undergraduate Student. Her undergraduate journey was capped off with another major win ― the Schwarzman Scholarship, which supports a fully funded master’s degree in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing. She became only the second UTD student to win both the Truman and Schwarzman awards and the University’s first female recipient of the Schwarzman.
“The process of applying for these competitive scholarships is always very grueling,” Ramazan said. “You’re trying to fit your life and all the work that you’ve done into this neatly packaged narrative. You’re writing and rewriting essays and having to grapple with all these questions of how these pieces fit together.”
When Ramazan graduated in 2021, she wasn’t sure what her next move would be ― until she learned about Buckle Bunnies, a mutual aid abortion fund based in Texas.
“I began to do some research about abortion funds and mutual aid, and it dawned on me that Nevada, at the time, was one of five or six states that didn’t have an abortion fund listed on the National Network of Abortion Funds Registry,” she said.
Inspired, Ramazan reached out to a founder of Buckle Bunnies to learn more about the process of establishing a mutual aid fund.
“I left that call just feeling like if there was ever a time to try to build something and be okay with the risk that it just might not work out [this was it],” Ramazan said. “So, I ultimately decided to move back to Nevada and take a gamble.”
Ramazan launched the Wild West Access Fund of Nevada, the first mutual aid abortion fund in the state. As of today, the organization has distributed more than $1 million.
“Wild West Access Fund is the most amazing organization I’ve ever been involved with, but at the same time, working with an abortion fund is more addressing the symptoms of these really pressing problems as opposed to the root cause,” Ramazan said. “The root cause in many ways is policy oriented.”
That realization led her to law school. Ramazan is now pursuing a degree at Stanford Law School as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar with the goal of advancing reproductive justice through policy reform.
“I feel confident that no matter what restoring the legal aspect of abortion rights looks like in the future, having a JD will always be tremendously helpful to do so,” she said.
Her advice for current students?
“Pinpointing your passion at age 18 or 19 is tricky and admittedly daunting,” Ramazan said. “Just try different things and see what it is that really works for you. As long as you have the perseverance to get back up when you are inevitably knocked down a little bit, things have a really wonderful way of working out for those who just believe in the beauty of their dreams and the things they care about.”