DiversAbility: Addressing Disability, Equity & Inclusion at Yale and Beyond

DiversAbility: Addressing Disability, Equity & Inclusion at Yale and Beyond

Wednesday, October 30th @ 12:00pm EST

While some people live with disability from birth, many of us can expect to experience disability at some point in our lives. Disability affects nearly 1 in 5 Americans, yet despite this reality, widespread misunderstandings, misconceptions and stigma continue to surround disability and those who live with disabilities. Join us for an informative and robust discussion and learn more about the ways disability and accessibility are being addressed at Yale and nationally. This event is free with lunch provided--registration is required.

This event, hosted at Yale University, is made possible through a collaboration between the following campus partners:

• Yale Alumni Association (Shared Interest Groups)
  

• DiversAbility at Yale

• Yale Office of Diversity and Inclusion

Registration required (no walk-ins)

Lunch provided

Limited spaces available

Speaker Lineup

• Janni Lehrer-Stein ’78 - Attorney and Disability Rights Advocate; served two terms on the National Council on Disability under President Obama

• Jim Conroy '70 - Co-president, Pennhurst Memorial & Preservation Alliance, part of a growing national coalition championing the establishment of a National Museum of Disability HIstory and Civil Rights
  

• Sarah Scott Chang, JD - Director, Yale Student Accessibility Services (formerly the Yale Resource Office on Disabilities)

• Paige Lawrence (Yale College, Class of 2021) – President, Disability Empowerment for Yale (DEFY) student group

• Sarah Poggi '96 MD - Medical Director, Inova Alexandria Antenatal Testing Center

Speaker Bios

Janni Lehrer-Stein ’78
Janni is an attorney and disability rights advocate. Appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the United States Senate, Janni served two terms on the National Council on Disability, from 2011-2016. She was Senior Disability Policy Advisor to the Hillary for America Campaign, and chaired the Disability Rights Policy committee for Governor Gavin Newsom’s campaign in California. Janni has served on the Foundation Fighting Blindness national Board of Directors for five years, is a member of the National academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine Forum on Aging and Disability, and recently retired from the board of Disability Rights Advocates, a national disability advocacy firm. She currently serves as Vice chair, Finance for the DNC Disability Council and as leader of the Disability Leadership Council for Senator Kamala Harris’ campaign for President. Janni lives in San Francisco, California, with her husband, Lenny Stein (Davenport, ’78), and has three children. She has been progressively blinded by retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited retinal degenerative disease.

Jim Conroy '70
Graduating cum laude from Yale University in 1970 with a BA in Physiological Psychology, Dr. Conroy began his career doing research on the impacts of the Developmental Disabilities Act of 1970. He received his MA in Sociology/Program Evaluation and Ph.D. in Medical Sociology from TempleUniversity. He was Director of Research & Program Evaluation at Temple University’s Institute on Disabilities from its beginning until 1992. He then founded, and continues to direct, the nonprofit Center for Outcome Analysis, devoted to the study and implementation of support models that produce the best outcomes in human services, including education, health care, long-term care, aging, and disabilities. Dr. Conroy has directed more than a dozen longitudinal studies of the impacts human service programs, including moving from institutional and nursing home situations to community living. He has studied the complex nature of quality of life, particularly among citizens with disabilities and elders, for several decades. He has been particularly interested in the role of community inclusion, relationships, and power over one’s own life choices. Since 1998, he has been committed to, and has worked toward, the creation of a national site of conscience and dignified memory of the Disability Rights Movement in the United States. He has been responsible for more than 300 formal research reports to government agencies and foundations, as well as more than 30 articles in scholarly journals, 12 book chapters, and two co-edited books. His works have been publicized on CBS 60 Minutes, ABC Nightline, the History channel, the Travel Channel, public television, public radio, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Times, and he has been invited to speak at the United Nations three times.

Sarah Scott Chang, JD
Sarah is Director of Yale Student Accessibility Services (formerly the Yale Resource Office on Disabilities), which is responsible for coordinating services for all students with disabilities at Yale. The office partners with others throughout the University to ensure that guests with disabilities have the accommodations needed for a safe and robust experience while visiting on campus. Before coming to Yale, Sarah has worked in a number of settings dedicated to supporting individuals with disabilities including serving as a disability advocate in Joplin, Missouri, as a support coordinator for a number of residential facilities, and as a resource coordinator at Washington University in St. Louis. Sarah has a bachelor’s in Sociology from the University of Missouri and her juris doctorate from the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill.

Paige Lawrence (Yale College, Class of 2021)
Paige is a junior History major from Kansas with a passion for Egyptology. She serves as the Disability Empowerment for Yale (DEFY) president and the Disability Peer Mentor Program coordinator. Aside from advocating for better accessibility on campus, Paige is the Yale State and Local Policy Review (YSLPR) editor-in-chief, the Women’s Leadership Initiative’s Finance Business Manager (treasurer), and a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma.

Sarah Poggi '96 MD
Sarah is a 1992 graduate of Princeton University and 1996 graduate of Yale School of Medicine. She completed her OB-GYN residency at UCLA in 2000 and her fellowship in Maternal Fetal Medicine (high risk obstetrics) at Georgetown in 2003. She currently serves as the Medical Director of the Inova Alexandria Antenatal Testing Center in Alexandria, VA.
Sarah met her husband Matthew Poggi (Yale College ’92) at Yale Med in gross anatomy class and they were married in 1995. At age 28 he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when he presented with right sided hemiplegia (paralysis on his right sided). While he had an 80% recovery he was never able engage in his favorite hobbies of running or skiing after this and walked with a limp. He was able to complete a residency in Radiation Oncology in the NIH and father two children (Eliza has just started at Yale as a freshman and Julia is a junior in high school). Sadly he deteriorated over the years despite aggressive therapy and required a crutch in his mid-thirties to walk. In 2015 he became suddenly quadriplegic due to an MS lesion at cervical spine level 1. He worked in a wheelchair for six months with Sarah's support at work as they worked at the same hospital. He then became too ill, enduring 29 hospitalizations with 11 surgeries, including the amputation of his left lower leg due to a pressure sore. He died April 27, 2019 at age 49 due to complications of his disease.
Sarah kept him at home during this time and can speak to the difficulties of essentially running a nursing home for one person in terms of building a handicapped accessible room/bathroom, maintaining supplies and medication (including medical marijuana!), 24-7 staffing and frequent need for hospitalization, all at the same time of needing to be the primary bread earner as the family went from a double to single income with an increase in health-related costs. Making this all doable was Matt’s unflagging spirit and ability to maintain a sense of dignity and good humor. One of the couple’s proudest moments as a caregiver and quad was when the wheelchair repairman complained that he was constantly having to replace Matt’s battery and wheels compared to other clients, the result of our frequent adventures out with friends or to events at their girls' school and other travels.

Location

Yale University
Sterling Memorial Library – 1st Floor Lecture Hall
120 High Street
New Haven, CT 06511

Registration Deadline: Monday, October 28th @ 12:00pm (EST)

For more information about this event and the broader DiversAbility alumni initiative, please contact Henry Kwan ’05 MA, director for shared interest groups (Yale Alumni Association): henry.kwan@yale.edu