Kate Hildebrandt '09 received the Outstanding Alumna award in 2015 in recognition of her ongoing commitment to social justice and sexual violence advocacy. After graduating from Rice, Kate served in the Peace Corps as a Community Health and HIV/AIDS Program Volunteer in Kavango, Namibia. While in Kavango, she worked with youth to both prevent HIV and decrease the stigma associated with the disease, teen pregnancy prevention, and support for rape survivors. After her time in the Peace Corps, Kate worked for three years as a training specialist for the Houston Area Women's Center (HAWC), where she trained professionals in the community on both crisis interventions with survivors of sexual and domestic violence and prevention programming for youth and adults. Following her work at the HAWC, Kate joined the staff at Rice as Title IX Resource Navigator in a newly created office that addresses the prevention of and response to sexual and relationship violence on campus. After graduate studies at Ohio State University, she is now the Civil Rights and Title IX Specialist for the state of Oregon's Department of Education.