Hannah Whitten

Hannah Whitten was born and raised in Oklahoma City. In 2019, she received a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism with a major in advertising and a minor in Entrepreneurship from the University of Oklahoma. Hannah earned her Juris Doctorate from the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 2022. During law school, Hannah made appearances on the Dean’s Honor Roll and was a member of the Organization for the Advancement of Women in the Law. After graduating law school, Hannah passed the recently established Uniform Bar Exam. Currently, Hannah is a member of the Oklahoma Bar Association.

Hannah’s older brother, Dylan, was diagnosed with epilepsy before she was born. Watching him struggle with his disease since her first memory shaped her life experience greatly. His passion for living life to the fullest and helping others humbled Hannah to her core. Dylan did not allow epilepsy to define him and lived a life that inspired us. He passed away in August of 2017 from Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). Hannah feels passionate about finding a cure for epilepsy to prevent anyone else from experiencing her family’s loss.

As a board member of the Isaiah Stone Foundation (ISF) since 2017, Hannah enjoys ISF’s focus on aiding local families with children with epilepsy and funding epilepsy research. She is also the youngest board member for CURE Epilepsy, the largest private funder of research for a cure for epilepsy. Lastly, she sits on Partners Against Mortality in Epilepsy’s (PAME) governance committee and aids in putting on PAME’s yearly research conference. Hannah was recently awarded the NextGen 30 under 30 award and the Oklahoma Spirit Award for her work in epilepsy. She has a love for service, but epilepsy has a special place in her heart, and she plans on being involved in the fight against epilepsy for the rest of her life.

Hannah, on behalf of the Whitten-Newman Foundation and in partnership with Gardiner Lapham at BAND Foundation, is creating the first documentary to cover the epilepsy epidemic in Africa and working on a sister stigma campaign in Kenya and in the U.S. to combat the painful and challenging stigma associated with epilepsy globally. They are presenting the film at 2023’s Epilepsy Congress in Dublin, Ireland.