Doing it for her daughter
Hudyma makes history as Darien’s first female police captain
DARIEN — In its 98-year-history, the Darien Police Department has never had a woman officer attain one of the highest positions in any law enforcement agency.
That changed Sunday, when Lt. Alison Hudyma, a 21-year-veteran of the department, traded in her old title for that of captain.
“I’m excited, I’m nervous,” Hudyma said of her promotion, which was announced earlier this month. “It feels a bit surreal at this point.”
Now, Hudyma will join the small but growing contingent of women advancing to top positions at law enforcement agencies across the country.
For Hudyma, the new role is a full-circle moment: She is taking over the vacancy from one of her earlycareer mentors, former Capt. Robert Shreders, who retired in January.
And even after more than 21 years of service, Hudyma said the news came as a shock.
Hudyma was hired by Darien in October 2000, when she was 23 years old.
She said she had initially been unsure about the career — she had not grown up wanting to be a police officer and had applied a year after graduating from the University of Connecticut — but heeded a suggestion from a family friend and took two entrance tests.
“I was hired by Darien and I went to the academy thinking, ‘Let’s just see how it goes,’ ” Hudyma said. “Then I went on to field training and same thing — let me just see how it goes. And then I got on the force, and I loved it.”
Hudyma started as a patrol officer and spent years working through multiple departments, including the Marine Division and the Accident Investigations team.
About five years into her career, she was tasked with helping form the department’s first Domestic Violence Unit, which sparked a continuing interest in advocacy centered on domestic violence awareness and prevention, she said.
And again making DPD history — something of a pattern— she became the first female lieutenant in 2019.
“Any opportunity I could take, I took — not only because I was interested but because I wanted to learn every aspect of the job that I could,” Hudyma said. “And I think there is an extra hurdle you have to
go over as a woman to prove yourself but also just to progress in your career in a male-dominated field.”
Kym Craven, the executive director of the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives, said the rate of women in law enforcement has hovered between 12 and 13 percent for the 35 years she has been with the organization.
But she is beginning to see more women advancing through the ranks of leadership, Craven said.
Part of that is due to efforts within the field to increase representation of women in policing, such as the 30X30 initiative that seeks to have women make up 30 percent of participating agencies’ police recruit classes by 2030.
“There’s definitely a lot more attention to it these days, but we’re not out of the generation of the ‘first woman,’ ” Craven said. “Until we have 18,000 agencies with a female police chief, we’re still going to be hearing the ‘first woman’ rise through the ranks.”
When she first started, the rate of women in the Darien force hovered at 10 percent, Hudyma said, which has gradually increased to 13 percent.
Though she said she has not faced overt discrimination during her career, Hudyma said she has often battled worries that being a woman could impact the way she was perceived.
But women officers bring varied
strengths to the table and are often underutilized in the field, Hudyma said. She believes her own career has been due to hard work and the right timing.
“If you took my name off, and you put my resume next to someone else, I think that’s where it shows that whether you’re male or female, you do the best you can at your job,” she said.
Now, Hudyma said she is seeing more women applying to work at the police department.
As captain, she said she wants to serve as a mentor to early-career women. But Hudyma also wants to empower and encourage any officers, regardless of gender, who are just starting out in the field — an experience she remembers.
“I look back and think that at 23, I don’t even know what I was doing,” Hudyma said. “And here I am. It’s exciting.”
During one recent conversation, Hudyma said her 7-year-old daughter asked her mother why there have been no woman presidents.
Hudyma told her daughter she would probably see a woman president in her lifetime. As she explained, she said she was struck by parallels in her own profession, and her own career.
“I do this for her, to show her that women can do whatever they want to do,” Hudyma said. “You’re not stuck in a box.”