Williford worked for over three decades as a labor lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board. She is the author of the chapbook of poems One Wide Sky (1997), and coordinated a reading series at the Takoma Park Branch of the DC Public Library, and a poetry book group at Politics & Prose bookstore. Williford served on the board of directors of the Jung Society of Washington. The International Human Rights Arts Movement hosts an annual justice poetry competition in her name.