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2002 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award Recipients Announced
Award Presentations to be Made March 4th in Washington, DC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mariana V. Nork
202-955-6114

Washington, DC, January 22, 2003- The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) is delighted to announce that the following individuals have been selected by a national advisory committee to receive the 2002 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Awards for emerging leaders with disabilities:

"AAPD is delighted to once again recognize an extraordinary group of individuals, all of whom are helping to grow the strength and influence of the disability rights movement," says Andrew J. Imparato, AAPD President and CEO. "These five individuals are making a difference in their communities, and helping to build bridges to a more inclusive American society."

This year's Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award recipients, whose biographies are attached, were selected on a highly competitive basis from almost 350 applications by a national advisory committee to receive cash awards of $10,000 each, to further their work in the disability community.

The Milbank Foundation for Rehabilitation established The Paul G. Hearne Leadership Awards for Disabilities program in 1999 to recognize and carry on the work of Paul G. Hearne, a renowned leader in the national disability community and AAPD's founder, as well as to realize his goal of cultivating potential leaders to carry on the disability movement. Administration of this program was passed in 2000 to AAPD and the program is now referred to as the Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Awards Program. 29 awards have been made to date.

Once again this year, AAPD is grateful as well to the additional sponsors of the Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Awards Program: The Bodman Foundation, the Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation and The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation.

This year's five Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award recipients will be honored guests at AAPD's second-annual Leadership Gala on March 4, 2003 at the Washington Hilton and Towers, Washington, DC. It is during this commemorative event that each recipient will be presented with a cash award, as well as a handsome heavy crystal flame signifying the passing of the torch. The award presentations will be made by Members of Congress.

Founded by Paul G. Hearne in 1995 to give people with disabilities more consumer power and a stronger public voice, the American Association of People with Disabilities is now the country's largest cross-disability membership organization. Its mission is to politically and economically empower all 56 million people living with disabilities in the U.S. Toward that end, AAPD is dedicated to educating businesses and the general public about disability issues, and providing membership benefits, such as financial services and product discounts. AAPD helps to unite the diverse community of people with disabilities, including their family, friends and supporters, and to be a national voice for change in implementing the goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act: equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living and economic self-sufficiency.

Biographies of the 2002 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award Recipients

Albert Cheong is recognized nationally as being a strong advocate for minorities with disabilities and for bringing the voice of Chinese people with disabilities to legislators. He lost his sight at the age of 13. In 1992, at the age of 25 and knowing no English, he moved to the U.S. Because of both the language and cultural differences, he encountered difficulty in assimilating into the American society and in finding a job, even in the Chinese community, because of the belief that if he could not see, then he could not work. This is what inspired Albert to begin to work to assist other Chinese-Americans with disabilities.

Since 1996, he has been the Chinese Community Services Coordinator at the Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco (ILRC), having been hired with limited advocacy, public education and public policy experience, but a demonstrable commitment to the inclusion of Chinese people with disabilities. He directs ILRC's Chinese Community outreach efforts; under his oversight, the program had an immediate and positive impact on the community.

In 1998, Albert advocated to bring the voice of the Chinese people with disabilities to legislators at the National Council on Disability (NCD) hearing on minorities with disabilities in San Francisco; his efforts resulted in the largest consumer showing ever at an NCD public hearing. In 2000, he was invited to join a Steering Committee for a Wellness Guide for California, and A California Board of Directors for Protection & Advocacy. He is also currently on the National Technical Assistance Advisory Board of Asian outreach at Hawaii University.

Albert is the first person in the U.S. to conduct workshops in Chinese on public benefits, employment rights, and U.S. citizenship for people with disabilities. And, due to his efforts, the local Chinese language media covers disability issues for the first time. He does a Chinese language radio show, as well as a newspaper column that is acknowledged as the most popular weekly column in the country's largest Chinese language newspaper.

Albert's leadership goals include enabling Chinese people with disabilities to understand their rights and have education in order to be employed, and to improve the quality of life for all people living with disabilities in the U.S. He plans to use his Paul G. Hearne Award to make an informational video in Chinese and English, with the goal of delivering a message to the world that Chinese people with disabilities have many abilities and, if provided the training and afforded the chance, can be strong community assets.

Claudia Gordon, the first Black deaf female attorney in the U.S., has been an advocate for people with disabilities since high school. It was her desire to address societal barriers faced by people with disabilities that motivated her to pursue a legal education and career. Since graduating from law school and being admitted to the Maryland Bar, Claudia has conducted numerous empowerment and legal education outreach and training to communities and organizations in both the U.S. and St. Thomas USVI.

"Being hailed as the first Black deaf female attorney in the U.S. has evidentially been an inspiration to members of this community, especially the youths, in setting high goals for themselves," she explains.

Claudia worked for two years at the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) Law Center, where on behalf of persons experiencing discrimination on the basis of deafness, she provided legal advocacy through direct legal representation in civil cases, technical assistance, training and outreach.

Claudia has a longstanding association with the National Black Deaf Advocates Association (NBDA), having served since 1989, and is currently its Vice-President. She has also provided advocacy leadership at the National Association of the Deaf Law Center; the Civil Practice Clinic at the Washington College of Law, Washington, DC Public Defender Service-Mental Health Division; the Black Law Students Association; the National Black Deaf Advocates Association; and the Consumer Action Network.

Additionally, Claudia has chaired a number of disability-oriented committees, participated in a number of advisory groups on disability and cultural diversity-related issues, and presented at a wide array of disability conferences and meetings. Her writings on disability policy have appeared in various organizational newsletters.

Currently, she is an independent consultant to the National Council on Disability (NCD)

Claudia has identified two very strong personal goals for the next five years: 1) to continue to advocate for the rights and quality of life of individuals with disabilities, on both a national and grassroots level; and 2) to establish a direct service foundation for the deaf in Washington, DC, in order to provide a variety of services to underserved and unserved segments of the city's deaf community.

Carrie D. Griffin is the creator of "Women Without Barriers," a mentoring program for high school-aged girls with disabilities that not only established one-on-one connections, but also a larger community, complete with workshops on topics ranging from sexuality to careers, and advocacy to independent living.

The recipient of scholarships from the Truman and ELA Foundations for her commitment to public service and disability rights, Carrie attended Harvard Law School, where she became involved in the employment rights of people with disabilities. She was convinced that the largest psychological, economic, socio-cultural and personal barriers that the women she met resulted in their own disenfranchisement from gainful employment opportunities. As she conveys, "I was motivated to preserve my interest, yet become skilled in legal approaches, and combine both in order to enable people with disabilities to access employment opportunities of their choosing."

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Carrie worked as a research assistant to Professor Sam Bagenstos, a Supreme Court advocate for the Echazabel case. She has served as an editor to the author of a plaintiff-side guide to disability rights litigation, and spent a summer as an Honors Intern in the Department of Justice's Disability Rights Section. Currently, she is serving a clerkship with Judge Neal Kravitz of the District of Columbia Superior Court.

Carrie has also created an online organization of lawyers and law students with disabilities, the Disabled Lawyering Alliance, to provide mentoring, networking and job opportunities. In less than one year, it has generated several hundred e-mail discussions, the exchange of job leads and the building of lasting relationships. She now proposes to expand this Alliance to include other professions, as a way of expanding employment opportunities for people with disabilities.

Carrie's ultimate goal is to create a national organization committed to the professional development of people with disabilities.

Peter Cody Hunt has been interested in working on disability-related issues since acquiring his disability in college, due to a spinal cord injury, and he focuses primarily on disability research and policy at the academic institution and federal government level. His belief is that, while the ADA has significantly improved the quality of life of people with disabilities, the impact of the disability rights movement and the ADA legislation have not yet reached or benefited the minority communities in this country, where cultural and social stigmas against people with disabilities still pose significant barriers.

Peter's interest in working at the grassroots-level was spawned when he moved to Pittsburgh to pursue graduate studies. He noticed a large Asian community with disabilities that appeared to be isolated and disenfranchised. With a personal commitment to educating and raising awareness within the Asian community about disability issues, Peter served as a volunteer at the Three Rivers Center for Independent Living (TRCIL), first as an outreach liaison for the local Asian community and later as a Board member.

Shortly thereafter and with a fellow TRCIL Board member, he mobilized the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation and Life's Work (Vocational Rehabilitation Center) to develop programs culturally appropriate to serve Asians with Disabilities. Peter is also a network member for the Center on disability Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

He recently authored a monograph, Providing Rehabilitation Services to Vietnamese with Disabilities: Information for U.S. Providers, as part of the Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information and Exchange monograph series to educate U.S. rehabilitation service providers to better serve people with disabilities born in foreign countries.

For the coming year, Peter strives to work with his Paul G. Hearne Award mentor, William Chrisner III, CRC/CRA, President and Executive Director of TRCIL, to develop a model program to serve Asians with disabilities in small and rural communities.

Peter plans to complete his doctoral studies in rehabilitation science and technology in 2003; thereafter, he will seek a position in a national disability organization, in order to continue his advocacy work.

Sarah Louise Triano has dedicated her life to promoting a culture that teaches new values and beliefs and acknowledges the dignity and worth of all people, and to mentoring children with disabilities in order to ensure they do not grow up feeling ashamed of their disabilities. "We must take back the definition of disability and proclaim that shame will no longer be the basis for our identity," she explains.

Sarah's advocacy began in 1992 when, at the age of 17, she participated in the nation's first Youth Leadership Forum for High School Students with Disabilities in California. Subsequent to that, she went on to assist in the replication of this model youth leadership forum throughout the U.S.

She received her BA in History of Public Policy from the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), graduating valedictorian, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Next, she assisted the National Council on Disability (NCD) in the creation of the National Youth Leadership Development Conference in Washington, DC. In 2001, Sarah co-founded the National Disabled Students Union.

Currently, Sarah is the Director of the nation's first locally-based leadership and organizing training program for disabled youth, Y.I.E.L.D. the Power to the Youth, at Access Living in Chicago, IL.

She has published articles and given speeches that directly attack existing definitions of disability in the dominant culture and attempt to awaken the consciousness of disabled people (who have traditionally been excluded from the disability movement). These include an NCD report, Lift Every Voice: Modernizing Disability Policies and Programs to Serve a Diverse Nation, and Coming Home to Disabled Country, which was distributed in 2001 through the Justice For All national e-mail network.

She believes that the "cultural homicide" that Dr. Martin Luther King considered to be one of the most serious barriers for black people in American society continues 35 years later, and is particularly apparent among people with disabilities. In the coming year, and with inspiration from Justin Dart's work across the country in 1989 and 1990, Sarah plans to do a National Disability Pride Tour. She will visit several states and conduct two-day disability-pride forums in local communities that will be designed to unite people with disabilities by focusing the establishment of disability pride as a common cause.

Sarah articulates her goals as follows: 1) to teach people with disabilities lacking access to a university about their history, to bring disability history to the people; 2) to develop a sense of dignity and worth among people with disabilities nationally by holding disability consciousness-raising groups; and 3) to mobilize and organize fragmented groups of people with disabilities at the local level and strengthen their collective capacity to bring about social change through targeted political education.

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