National Leadership Program, Summer 2017
Judith Lao
Judith Lao was a Nonprofit Management Fellow with RespectAbility. Lao was pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She is an individual with a mental illness and believes that her personal experiences facing stigma and marginalization have translated well into an active passion for advocacy.
Lao is part of Project LETS at Brown University, which supplements traditional mental healthcare with accessible, empathetic peer support focused on empowerment of the peer. She is interested in the relationship between mental health and mental illness. She also is interested in the variety of ways in which one’s experiences can be influenced by the definition of disability—both the self-affirmative and self-identifying label of disability, as well as the stigmatized definition placed upon individuals by society.
Lao profiled Kevin Webb, Nancy Bocskor and Debbie Ratner Salzberg, three guest speakers for the 2017 Summer Fellowship. Read them on our website:
- Disability as a Philanthropic Niche – A Conversation with the Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation’s Kevin Webb
- Role of Storytelling in Development – Learning from Nancy Bocskor
- What it Means to be a Leader in a Nonprofit – A Conversation on Building a Board with Debbie Ratner Salzberg
