Our Team

Sharon daVanport is a disabled advocate, speaker, and educator who serves as the Founding Executive Director of the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. They are passionate about access to sexual and reproductive health care, support and advocacy for victims and survivors of intimate partner violence, gender and racial equity and justice in disability rights organizations, and leadership of disabled people in multiple marginalized communities. Under Sharon’s leadership, AWN’s website was selected by the Library of Congress to be archived for AWN’s contribution to women’s and gender studies, AWN joined a critical collaboration with autism researchers at George Washington University and Children’s National Health System, expanded to hire its first staff, launched its own publication imprint as DragonBee Press, collaborated on the annual Autistics Present Symposium on autistic culture and community, and developed a robust fiscal sponsorship program that supports the work of grassroots organizations, projects and events in the greater disability community. Some of these fiscal partners include the Disability Intersectionality Summit, Access the Polls, and the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment.

Sharon serves on the steering committee of the National Disability Leadership Alliance; represents AWN as part of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities; serves as Board Treasurer for Crushing Colonialism, a multimedia Native-led project; and serves as a self-advocate advisory board member for Felicity House, a social support and community outreach center for autistic women in New York City. Over the past decade, Sharon has advocated for autistic women, girls, and nonbinary people through forging critical research collaborations and providing consultations to White House and U.S. Government Accountability Office staff. In connection to their role as Felicity House advisory board member, Sharon was interviewed on the Today Show during the morning program’s Sisterhood Series in January 2020. Along with Emily Paige Ballou and Kristina Thomas, Sharon co-edited the anthology What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew, which received the Autism Society’s Dr. Temple Grandin Award for Outstanding Literary Work of the Year in 2017. Sharon also contributed an essay on AWN’s founding and early work to the collection Autistic Advocacy and the Neurodiversity Movement: Stories from the Frontline. They received the Autistic Self Advocacy Network’s Award for Service to the Self-Advocacy Movement in 2014.

Outside of their work with AWN, Sharon is the Business Manager for BeeDragon LLC, which provides full-service web design and development services to small businesses and nonprofit organizations. Previously, Sharon served as Treasurer for the Nebraska State Independent Living Council, where they had been appointed as a representative of the Nebraska Department of Education. Sharon’s professional work history includes case management for a state employment service and workforce development agency, a family support worker at a human services agency responsible for promoting family reunification for children and youth in the foster system, and an advisor for a court watch program and domestic violence coalition. Sharon’s educational pursuits include women’s & gender studies, as well as entrepreneurship & business administration,  and is a certified peer support and wellness specialist. In Sharon’s spare time, they enjoy traveling, research, reading, music, and spending time with family and close friends.

Morénike Giwa Onaiwu is a disabled woman of color, educator, writer, public speaker, parent, and global advocate. A proactive, resourceful individual in a multicultural, neurodiverse, serodifferent family, Morénike, who is American-born to immigrant parents and whose undergraduate and graduate degrees are in International Relations and Education, is passionate about human rights, justice, and inclusion.

She is involved in various social justice activism endeavors including HIV-related advocacy, disability rights, learning via technology, research, and gender and racial equity. A prolific writer, Morénike has written for and/or been featured in numerous blogs, abstracts, magazines, books, and other platforms, often drawing from her personal experiences as a late-diagnosed Autistic adult woman, a person of color, an Autistic parent of Autistic and non-Autistic children, and a survivor of intimate partner violence. In addition to writing, she is one of the editors (along with Lydia X.Z. Brown and E. Ashkenazy) of a groundbreaking anthology on autism and race as well as a co-coordinator of the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment.

Morénike has been an invited speaker in the White House, at the United Nations Headquarters, and a keynote speaker and/or presenter at numerous peer-reviewed advocacy, education, disability, and research conferences. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the “Advocating for Another: Health Activist of the Year” 2014 WEGO Health Award and the “Service to the Self-Advocacy Movement” 2015 Autistic Self Advocacy Network Award.

Her executive experience includes board membership of a number of national research, disability, advocacy, and family service organizations, chairperson of both a large HRSA-funded local planning body and an international NIH-funded community research network, and leadership roles within various entities in addition to her work with the Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network’s Board of Directors and Chairing its Committee on Autism and Ethnicity.

Currently balancing her roles as a faculty member at a state college and as a doctoral student in an educational leadership program, Morénike considers herself a “lifelong learner” who is constantly growing and changing, hopefully for the better! She considers her wonderful children (biological and adopted and all of whom have various disabilities) to be her greatest accomplishment.

I am Lori. I am from New York and currently live in Baltimore, MD (US) with Karen, my wife and partner of 20 years, and our 2 cats Nikkyo and Buster.

I learned that I was autistic in 2005 after a lifetime of misdiagnoses. Since then, I have gone from thinking there was no one else like me in the world to finding a huge community of people who have had nearly identical life experiences as me. I have also been on a mission to help autistic people find each other on the internet.

I am a web developer and build and maintain websites for AWN, for my clients, and for other autistic and nonprofit organizations. I feel very lucky to be a part of the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network and hope that someday I will be able to do this type of work for the autism community full time.

Lydia X. Z. Brown is a disability justice advocate, organizer, and writer whose work has largely focused on violence against multiply-marginalized disabled people, especially institutionalization, incarceration, and policing. They have worked to advance transformative change through organizing in the streets, writing legislation, conducting anti-ableism workshops, testifying at regulatory and policy hearings, and disrupting institutional complacency everywhere from the academy to state agencies and the nonprofit-industrial complex. Currently, Lydia is a Justice Catalyst Fellow at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, working on defending and advancing the educational civil rights of Maryland students with psychosocial, intellectual, and developmental disabilities facing various forms of disproportionate discipline, restraint and seclusion, and school pushout.

In collaboration with E. Ashkenazy and Morénike Giwa Onaiwu, Lydia is also co-editor and visionary behind All the Weight of Our Dreams, the first-ever anthology of writings and artwork by autistic people of color and otherwise negatively racialized autistic people, published by the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. Lydia is the Founder, and also co-directs with Morénike, the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment, which provides direct support, mutual aid, and community reparations to individual autistic people of color. Lydia is also a founding board member of the Alliance for Citizen-Directed Services.

Lydia recently completed a term as Chairperson of the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council, serving in that role from 2015 to 2017 as the youngest appointee nationally to chair any state developmental disabilities council. They also designed and taught a course on critical disability theory, public policy, and intersectional social movements as a Visiting Lecturer at Tufts University’s Experimental College. Previously, Lydia served as TASH New England’s co-president and its stakeholder representative to the Massachusetts One Care Implementation Council overseeing health care for people who are dually eligible for Medicaid and Medicare. They were formerly staff at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network for several years, working on programs and policy matters. They have also been a Holley Law Fellow at the National LGBTQ Task Force, and a Patricia Morrissey Disability Policy Fellow at the Institute for Educational Leadership.

Lydia has been honored by the White House, Washington Peace Center, National Council on Independent Living, Disability Policy Consortium of Massachusetts, National Association for Law Placement/Public Service Jobs Directory, Society for Disability Studies, and American Association of People with Disabilities. In 2015, Pacific Standard named Lydia a Top 30 Thinker under 30, and Mic named Lydia to its inaugural list of 50 impactful leaders, cultural influencers, and breakthrough innovators. Their work has been featured in scholarly publications including Disability Studies Quarterly; Addressing Ableism: Philosophical Questions via Disability Studies; Religion, Disability, and Interpersonal Violence; Barriers & Belonging: Personal Narratives of Disability; Feminist Perspectives on Orange is the New Black; Torture in Healthcare Settings; and Films for the Feminist Classroom; and community publications including The Asian American Literary Review; All In Your Head Zine: To The Bone; QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology; Criptiques; Disability Intersections; Black Girl Dangerous; hardboiled magazine; POOR Magazine; and NOS Magazine.

Lydia recently graduated from Northeastern University School of Law as a Public Interest Law Scholar. While at Northeastern, they served as an active member of the Committee Against Institutional Racism (representing the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association), the Transgender Justice Task Force, and the Faculty Appointments Committee, and are a founding core collective member of the Disability Justice Caucus. Earlier, while at Georgetown University, Lydia co-founded the Washington Metro Disabled Students Collective for intersectional disability justice organizing, led multiple campaigns to reform university policies on disability access that led to creation of a dedicated pool of funding for sign language interpretation and real-time captioning as well as an access coordinator position responsible for public and non-academic programming, single-handedly founded and coordinated the first Lecture and Performance Series on Disability Justice, served two terms as Undersecretary for Disability Affairs with the Georgetown University Students Association, spurred the university to convene a Disability Justice Working Group, provided training to numerous student groups and university departments and offices, and served on the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities’ consumer advisory council.

They have served on advisory boards to a number of research projects, including the National Center for Cultural Competence’s Embedding Cultural Diversity and Cultural and Linguistic Competence: A Guide for UCEDD[1] Curricula and Training Activities Project[2]; a postdoctoral Advanced Rehabilitation and Research Training Program on Health and Functioning of People with Disabilities hosted at Brandeis University’s Lurie Institute for Disability Policy within the Heller School for Social Policy and Management[3]; and Drexel University’s Ethical Autism Research Cultures and Community Engagement project[4]. They have also served as peer reviewer for Journal of Homosexuality, Autism in Adulthood, and Disability Studies Quarterly.

My name is Mara Fritts and I was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome in 2008. I have been married for fourteen years to my husband who was also diagnosed with AS in 2008. We have four children, three of which are currently on the autism spectrum.

I am currently a Stay-At-Home-Mom (SAHM) and homeschooling all of my children. I’d like to someday return to college for my degree in Anthropology. However with homeschooling I think I would be much better suited with a teaching degree at this point.

Before I became a SAHM I worked in Customer Service for 15 years with various insurance companies where I was involved with providing service for agents and customers in Life Insurance and Annuities where I gained extensive experience in finance.

I have been on staff at four Science Fiction Conventions, and I am in charge of registration travel arrangements with my husband’s business, as well as having been in charge of the Hospitality Suite.

I enjoy a good challenge and also love working with people. Being diagnosed with Aspergers has taught me many things. One of them is to accept people for who they are and look for the “why” in all situations. It has helped me to help my children reach their potential and teach them how to get around what some consider a disability. In our home we recognize it as a different way of thinking.

Corina Lynn Becker lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. As well as autistic, she is nonbinary, asexual, chronically ill, and ADHD. Corina graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University in 2008 with a B.A. in English, and is currently finishing her B.A. in Disability Studies at Ryerson University.

At Ryerson, she has been awarded the M.K. Chant Disability Studies Award and the Bill and Lucille Owen Award in Public Policy. In 2011, Corina received the ASAN Award for Exceptional Service to the Autistic Community for developing Autistics Speaking Day (ASDay).

In her spare time, Corina writes and draws fantasy novels and comics, paints, knits, crochets, reads, and plays board games, video games and D&D, as well as other geeky things. She also writes on her personal blog No Stereotypes Here.

Elesia Ashkenazy lives in Portland, Oregon. She is passionate about Disability Rights and self-advocacy, and seeks to promote widespread understanding of the needs and rights of autistic individuals, especially females. She is also a parent of a son on the spectrum.

Elesia is the Community Council Chair and Research Assistant for Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE). She is also a member of the Community Advisory Board for the Partnering with People with Developmental Disabilities to Address Violence Project via the University of Montana Rural Institute.

Elesia worked as the Chapter & Outreach Coordinator for Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) for several years and is also a former Board member. In addition, she has served as a member of the Screening Identification and Assessment Subcommittee for the Oregon Commission on Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Outside of her advocacy and public speaking work, Elesia aspires to be a published author of Young Adult fiction. She is also a classically trained ballet dancer who continues to take class several times a week and performs whenever the opportunity arises. Elesia is fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and is also a cochlear implant recipient. Be sure to check out her blog, Aspitude.