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2004 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award Recipients Announced
December 6, 2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mariana V. Nork
202-457-0046

Award Presentations to be Made March 9 th in Washington, DC

Washington, DC, — The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) announces that the following three individuals have been selected by a national advisory committee to receive the 2004 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Awards for emerging leaders with disabilities:

“AAPD is delighted to honor and recognize these three extraordinary individuals with Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Awards,” says Andrew J. Imparato, AAPD President and CEO. “Each of them has already demonstrated a commitment and ability to helping to grow the strength and influence of the disability rights movement, and helping to build bridges to a more inclusive society.”

The 2004 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award recipients, whose biographies are attached, were selected on a highly competitive application basis by a national advisory committee to receive cash awards of $10,000 each to further their work in the disability community.

This award program was established by The Milbank Foundation for Rehabilitation in 1999, to recognize and carry on the work of Paul G. Hearne, AAPD’s founder and a renowned leader in the national disability community, and to realize Paul’s goal of cultivating emerging leaders to carry on the disability movement. Administration of the program was passed to AAPD in 2000. 37 awards of $10,000 each have been made to date.

AAPD is grateful to the sponsors of the Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Awards Program: Milbank Foundation for Rehabilitation, Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation, and The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation.

These three award recipients will be honored guests at AAPD’s fourth-annual AAPD Leadership Gala on March 9, 2005 at the Capital Hilton, Washington, DC. During this commemorative event, each recipient will be presented with a cash award, as well as a handsome crystal flame that signifies the passing of the torch of leadership. 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, AAPD is the country’s largest cross-disability membership organization, with more than 100,00 members. AAPD’s mission is to politically and economically empower the more than 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 (ADA): equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living and economic self-sufficiency.

Biographies of the 2004 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award Recipients

Berhanu Joffe Deboch

Berhanu Joffe Deboch, a political refugee who recently came to Oregon and is a student at Portland State University, and whose work has been rooted in advocacy for neglected, marginalized and disadvantaged individuals, has committed himself to working to eradicate the many barriers that people with disabilities face. According to one of Berhanu’s current professors, Berhanu possesses strong leadership skills in teaching his peers about the national activities for and with blind persons, and for raising their collective consciousness.

Berhanu is from Ethiopia, where he attended the University of Addis Ababa. While a student there, he was elected to serve as a Public and Recruitment Officer for the Ethiopian National Organization of the Blind (ENOB), and served in that capacity for four years. He explains that this service afforded him the chance to work with community members and to increase awareness of the impact of blindness on a person’s experiences.

After graduation, Berhanu worked at the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing as a Junior Expert Housing Specialist. In that role, he organized neighborhood cooperatives to build housing for low-income people. He has often pointed to the work with the disability community there as his proudest accomplishment, where he was able to obtain major funding and develop housing cooperatives for hundreds of people with disabilities. This particular project, according to Berhanu, not only enabled families to build their own homes, but also illustrated the resourcefulness and capabilities of individuals with disabilities.

In South Africa, he worked for refugees with the United Nations Higher Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) as an interpreter, HIV counselor and representative of refugees in court; he emerged as a strong, vocal advocate for HIV infected people denied resettlement in developed countries.

In 1995, Berhanu became a refugee, living in camps in Kenya and Mozambique. While a refugee, he worked tirelessly to organize advocacy groups within the camps. He is proud that, despite his blindness, he was elected as the spokesperson for individuals who were voiceless and powerless.

He came to Oregon as a political refugee, and began his adjustment to blindness training while also adjusting to life in the U.S. He immediately started volunteer work at Portland’s Refugee Center, where he was able to utilize the leadership skills that had proved effective during his work in refugee camps in Kenya and Mozambique.

Berhanu now speaks vocally about the two most serious barriers that he believes people with disabilities face: a lack of awareness among non-disabled people about how disability affects a person’s life, and a lack of access to education for low-income people with disabilities. Toward that end, his personal leadership goals for the next five years are to continue to advocate as a social worker for voiceless people with disabilities, as well as children and women at risk; to continue his work and research on behalf of people living with HIV; and to delve further into the problems that HIV-positive people have and why they are denied resettlement in developed countries.

Berhanu has said that winning a Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award will enable him to complete his Master’s degree in Social Work at Portland State University, while also continuing to participate in national disability conferences and conduct international research.

Alan D. Muir

Alan Muir, who co-founded and continues to serve as Executive Director of Career Opportunities for Students with Disabilities (COSD) in Knoxville, Tennessee, is committed to working to enhance and improve the career opportunities of college students with disabilities through his work with universities and employers to ensure students with disabilities receive preparation and training.

Alan, who was also appointed four years ago by the Governor of Tennessee to serve on the Tennessee Council on Developmental Disabilities, started his advocacy efforts on behalf of the disability community when he personally faced attitudinal barriers and experienced firsthand the value of self-advocacy. His professional career began in the banking industry, and he had a sixteen-year commercial banking career in New York.

As he sees it, the most serious barrier for people with disabilities is securing career employment in their fields of choice, but also that a lack of self-advocacy skills and knowledge further increase the employment problem amongst people with disabilities, in particular, college graduates with disabilities. Believing that his personal experiences could directly benefit young people with disabilities searching out their career paths, Alan set out to change careers.

When he met Dr. Robert Greenberg, Director of Career Services at the University of Tennessee, together they recognized that there was an opportunity to make a difference for students with disabilities in terms of training and preparing them for career exploration and their exposure to the employer market. They conducted research that identified a nationwide problem of non-collaboration between Disability Services and Career Services offices on college campuses. Students with disabilities were getting neither the critical training in career planning they need nor taking advantage of experiential education opportunities. Consequently, they are nearly invisible to employers during on-campus recruiting efforts and programs.

Based on this research and these observations, Alan attained funding from the Tennessee Division of Rehabilitation Services to create the Disability Careers Office, which is a liaison office between Career Services and Disability Services. That is now a national example for other universities to emulate.

In 2001, Alan Muir and Dr. Greenberg co-founded COSD with a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy; Alan began his fulltime work leading COSD. In this capacity, Alan works to fulfill an additional need, which is close collaboration between Career Services, Disability Services and employers nationally.

Under his guidance and leadership, COSD has expanded its membership to 400 entities. As COSD’s Executive Director, Alan works to actively promote the idea of improving career employment prospects for students with disabilities to employers and organizations. He has successfully organized and attained necessary funding for annual COSD conferences, and conducts workshops to universities and employers around the country that highlight issues faced by students with disabilities during their job searches.

Alan has identified three leadership goals for next five years: to develop a two-credit distance-education course for college students with disabilities that teaches career search skills; to create a Technical Assistance Center to conduct research on practical solutions for COSD member institutions and employers in working with students with disabilities; and to bring people with disabilities into leadership positions at COSD as a means of further highlighting the abilities of people with disabilities.

Alan explains that being a Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award recipient will lend increased credibility to his work at COSD. Additionally, the funds will help to expand COSD’s reach to greater numbers of higher education institutions and employers. He believes that recognition of his work with COSD by way of this award will also further affirm that career employment for people with disabilities is vital and that COSD assistance in this arena impacts all sectors of the disability community.

Elise C. Roy

A two-sport varsity athlete, lawyer, and tireless advocate on the national and international levels who works to increase awareness of the importance of ensuring recreational and athletic opportunities for people with disabilities, Elise Roy is the co-founder of Ready-Set-Go in Washington, DC, and is gaining recognition as an emerging leader among the young Deaf lawyers in America.

Elise, who progressively lost her hearing since age ten, has fought injustices that discrimination has cost the disability community. She believes that discriminatory attitudes prevail around the world, and that for people with disabilities, these attitudes transcend into our barriers. But, she also believes that history has proven that attitudes can be changed.

Relaying her personal story, Elise explains that people did not believe she could attend an Ivy League college, but she went on to graduate from Brown University. While at Brown, she coordinated a group of upperclassmen who served as mentors to incoming students with disabilities through the BearAble mentor program. This group’s efforts and activities resulted in a more active and visible community of students with disabilities on the campus. Elise also while at Brown, created the first website for the school’s Disability Support Services Center. She was invited to address Brown’s Board of Directors, with the goal of advocating for more services and funding for students with disabilities on campus.

Elise subsequently received her law degree from Northeastern University School of Law.

While there, she participated in the United Nations Convention process of an international treaty on the rights of people with disabilities. Additionally and in conjunction with the Center for Sport and Society and the Landmine Survivors Network, she began advocating for an article that would enable people with disabilities the right to be viewed as athletic individuals and to participate equally in sport and recreation.

This past June 2004, Elise assembled and led a panel at the United Nations to brief delegates on the importance of including a sports and recreation provision in the proposed treaty. She has also been invited to serve as a delegate at the Oslo World Congress, where she met and shared ideas with disability advocates and academicians from around the world. She was recently appointed to serve as a representative for the United Nations Disability Caucus, and asked to lead Rehabilitation International’s Sports and Recreation Committee.

The past year, Elise worked at the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights as a disability rights litigator, through the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship Program. She feels that this experience gave her critical connections to advocates from various fields.

Elise has explained that the Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award will support her continued advocacy initiatives through an organization she recently co-founded, Ready-Set-Go. That organization provides a foundation to advance her goals of creating sport, recreation and play programming for children with disabilities and utilizing the unique setting of sport to disseminate HIV/AIDS and human rights education to vulnerable communities.

Elise’s two goals are to develop a Declaration of Rights for Athletes with Disabilities, and to continue to advocate on a multi-lateral level for children with disabilities.

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