RespectAbility’s National Disability Speakers Bureau
Jennifer Fink
Jennifer Fink (she, her) is an accomplished social entrepreneur and management consultant whose passion lies in promoting behavioral and community health. Due to an accident and illness in her mid-20s, Ms. Fink lives with nonvisible disabilities, anxiety, and depression. A captivating and relatable storyteller, Ms. Fink weaves humor and grace as she embraces and shares her story, wisdom, and lessons learned from her life post-illness, trauma, and accident. Along with her history of award-winning performance (before and after her accident) for her commitment to military families and client engagements, Ms. Fink has worked to transform commercial, federal, and nonprofit clients — including facilitating the merger of two leading managed behavioral health organizations’ claims operations.
Ms. Fink works to educate health providers on the patient perspective and to empower individuals learning to cope with mental health challenges. She has delivered dynamic trainings for the University of Georgetown’s Medical School psychiatry program about identifying signs and treating patients with anxiety and depression. Acknowledging the exponential increase in mental health prevalence due to COVID-19, Ms. Fink is growing this initiative across the country.
With a degree in Behavioral and Community Health, Ms. Fink founded a 501(c)3 nonprofit, Operation CHAMPS during college, serving military families, and co-authored a children’s book, “The Little CHAMPS,” a therapy tool for military children. She was an invited guest educator for a USO Tour to South Korea delivering programming to US military children throughout the country. Ms. Fink collaborated with the White House Joining Forces Initiative as then-First Lady Michelle Obama filmed a video for this USO Asia-Pacific Tour. With her focus on military families and behavioral and community health, Ms. Fink served as the Volunteer Programs Chair for the American Red Cross Service to the Armed Forces at National Naval Medical Center (Walter Reed) where she oversaw over 400 volunteers and 26 programs.
As an active member of the Jewish Community, Ms. Fink served on the University of Maryland (UMD) Hillel’s Board of Directors as a student representative and spoke on behalf of UMD Hillel for both Hillel International and the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. After graduation, Ms. Fink co-ran a Moishe House in the Washington, DC area and was nominated and selected as one of 20 international Jewish young professionals to participate in the International Ignite Fellowship for Jewish social impact leaders.
Ms. Fink loves to travel, raise service dogs, cook without recipes, do therapy dog work, and write poetry. She is best known by her friends and family for her well-trained yet poorly behaved dog Chief, quick wit, love for hosting, and elaborate cheese boards.
Jennifer Fink can be reached at jen.e.fink@gmail.com
About RespectAbility’s National Disability Speakers Bureau
RespectAbility’s National Disability Speakers Bureau offers diverse speakers with disabilities to teach about disability inclusion; and/or to offer their expertise in an array of topics, ranging from Art and Entertainment to Entrepreneurship, Education, Finance, Law, Psychology, Religion (of many faiths) and every vocation in between. Our Speakers Bureau and its divisions are expanding. If this is of interest to you or you know a professional with a visible or nonvisible disability who might be interested, you (or she/he/they) can email its project director, Debbie Fink, at debbief@respectability.org.
