Webinars June 22 & 29

Hello to everyone in the AWN community! 

You’ll notice that AWN has not had any webinars for a long time now. Well, I’m here to share that the hiatus is over! 

If you have been to AWN’s Liberating Webinars in the past, you’ll remember me, Nancy Yang, and I coordinated all our 2022 webinars and many of our 2021 webinars. I left AWN for a couple months, but now I am back as AWN’s Project Coordinator, and have helped organize new Liberating Webinars on June 22 and June 29. This year is especially exciting, because AWN is expanding our webinars to include Spanish language interpretation, and we’ll be continuing with ASL interpretation as well.

I’d like to invite you to these two webinars:

Our next webinar, Broadband Internet: Civil Rights and Disability Justice, is happening this Thursday, June 22 at 5pm Eastern / 2pm Pacific. The panelists will be DeVan Hankerson Madrigal, Valerie Novack, and our moderator will be AWN’s Senior Advisor, Lydia X. Z. Brown (bios below).

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Then on Thursday, June 29 at 7pm Eastern / 4pm Pacific AWN is collaborating with the Asperger/Autism Network (AANE) for a webinar on The Impact of Anti-Trans Legislation on the Autistic and Other Disabled Communities. The panelists will be Ma’ayan Anafi, Jay Eveson-Egler, Heron Greenesmith, and Victoria M. Rodríguez-Roldán, and the moderator will be AANE’s very own Becca Lory Hector (bios below).

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Here is a little more information on all our upcoming panelists:

On June 22, our panelists for Broadband Internet: Civil Rights and Disability Justice will be:

• DeVan Hankerson Madrigal, the Research Manager at the Center for Democracy & Technology. She is an advocate for improving technology access and expanding individual rights so that more people share in the benefits of technological progress.
• Valerie Novack (she/her), a disabled policy, research, and compliance professional working on inclusive infrastructure and community inclusion for people with disabilities. She currently works as a researcher with Utah State University.

On June 29, our panelists for The Impact of Anti-Trans Legislation on the Autistic and Other Disabled Communities will be:

• Ma’ayan Anafi, the Senior Counsel for Health Equity and Justice at the National Women’s Law Center. Their work focuses on a range of topics related to meaningful access to health and health care, including issues facing disabled and LGBTQI+ people.
• Jay Eveson-Egler, an Autistic self-advocate and current program manager with the Asperger/Autism Network (AANE). They’ve worked with neurodiversity-based organizations in a variety of roles, including as a 1:1 community companion, teacher, recruiter, and administrative assistant.
• Heron Greenesmith, Esq, a Senior Research Analyst at Political Research Associates and a policy attorney with over a decade of LGBTQ advocacy experience. Heron is also adjunct faculty at Boston University School of Law and an Editorial Board Member at the Bulletin of Applied Trans Studies.
• Victoria M. Rodríguez-Roldán, a national progressive policy advocate, a role into which she comes from broad intersectional expertise in issues impacting trans identity, disability, racism, and racial justice. 
• Becca Lory Hector (she/her), Director of Training at AANE. She is an openly Autistic professional on a mission to close the disability gap in leadership by working with companies to attract and retain disabled talent, including by creating a personal development course called ‘Self Defined Living: A Path to a Quality Autistic Life’.

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I hope you’re as excited as me about our Liberating Webinars series starting up again! I hope to see you at one or both of these upcoming events! I’ve missed this community and am so happy to be rejoining you again very soon.