Bio – Fellow – Past Fellows

National Leadership Program, Fall 2019

Courtney Murray

Courtney Murray was a Communications Fellow in RespectAbility’s National Leadership Program for Fall 2019. RespectAbility is a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities so that people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of community.

Murray’s professional experience in the disability field includes work as a full-time communications intern at American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD). At AAPD, she volunteered with the Global Down Syndrome Foundation and organized hundreds of giveaway packages for its gala. She also took part in daily discussions on the progress and setbacks of policies that were affecting people with disabilities. She researched and identified key players in the disability community for the benefit of business operations. Additionally, she worked at American Institutes for Research (AIR) and performed quality control (QC) of assessments for multiple state departments of education. Her work on the Operations team at AIR led to her evaluating the quality of braille assessments.

Murray is from Kensington, Maryland. She attended Howard University and graduated in 2011 with a Bachelors of Arts in Journalism with a concentration in Broadcast News. She minored in Administration of Justice. Her goal in completing the Fellowship is to enhance her social media management skills. In addition, she wants to become even more of an ally to people with disabilities during her Fellowship and beyond. Her hope is to secure a full-time position with an organization that encourages employee’s work-life balance.

Murray is passionate about music. She enjoys listening to most genres. Currently her favorite music streaming service is Sirius XM. Her go-to station on the service is Hip Hop Nation. Music-related television shows she favors are NBC’s The Voice and FOX’s Masked Singer.

Murray wrote several pieces during the Fall 2019 Fellowship. Check them out on our website:

• Comcast Tackles Digital Divide for Low-Income Disability Community (September 17, 2019)
• The Voice’s Will Breman Breaking Boundaries and Tackling Low Expectations for Singers with Disabilities (October 8, 2019)
• Diana Romero: Award-Winning Producer with Multiple Sclerosis Continues to Find Success in Hollywood (October 11, 2019)
• People with Disabilities Successfully Transition to Competitive Integrated Employment
  (November 6, 2019)

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National Leadership Program, Summer 2019

Grace Goldman

Grace Goldman was a Community Outreach Fellow in RespectAbility’s National Leadership Program.

A rising junior in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington in Seattle while she was an Apprentice, Goldman also pursued a minor in American Sign Language.

Determined in her goal to advance meaningful employment opportunities for people with disabilities, she works on a university task force to create a certificate program for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She worked at the Disability Resource Center for students on campus.

Originally from Bethesda, Maryland, Goldman moved to the state of Washington for college to explore how the other side of the country approaches disability issues as both a social and socio-economic endeavor. She cites her personal experiences with learning disabilities as one reason for her motivation to advocate for inclusion.

Goldman has been heavily involved in Best Buddies since her first year of high school. She started a chapter of Best Buddies at the University of Washington as a freshman and currently serves as president. She recently spoke at the Best Buddies “Champion of the Year” Gala in Seattle where it was announced that local efforts had raised enough funds to open a state office in Washington. This office will further the group’s mission of inclusion through not only one-to-one friendships but also accessible jobs and self-advocacy.

In her free time, Goldman enjoys participating in her sorority, playing Special Olympics Soccer and serving as a student senator. She also enjoys time with her family and four rescue dogs.

Goldman joined the RespectAbility team because of its mission to change the stigma and isolation of disability in our society. She appreciates the network of like-minded Fellows at RespectAbility, collaborating to learn together and create meaningful opportunities for those with disabilities. Goldman is inspired by the perseverance, positive outlook and enthusiasm of the individuals and friends she has met in the disability community who continue to push her to better the systems and challenges related to disability.

Goldman wrote two pieces for RespectAbility. Check them out on our website:

• Volunteer of the Month: Gary Norman (October 7, 2019)
• Volunteer of the Month: Jonathan Murray (December 3, 2019)

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National Leadership Program, Summer 2019

Adam Fishbein

Adam Fishbein was a Jewish Inclusion and Community Outreach Fellow in RespectAbility’s National Leadership Program in the summer of 2019. He previously served as a Public Policy and Employment Fellow at RespectAbility in the fall of 2017.

Originally from the Philadelphia area, Fishbein recently graduated as a Politics, Policy and Law Scholar from American University, earning in just three years his Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies: Communications, Law, Economics and Government. He will continue his education for one more year at AU as a Master of Public Administration candidate.

Fishbein’s interest in disability policy and advocacy stems from his own mental health and learning challenges. Throughout his childhood, Fishbein was involved in the PA Tourette Syndrome Alliance (PA-TSA) and the Tourette Association of America. He lobbied his legislators for state and federal funding for Tourette Syndrome awareness and research efforts and promoted understanding of Tourette through mass media outlets and public speaking.

Fishbein has continued to embrace his role as a disability advocate during college. He has served as a member of the PA-TSA Board of Directors since 2015, initially as its first youth board representative, and currently as vice president and board development committee chairman. He was appointed as the deputy director of disability advocacy for AU Student Government during the 2016-17 academic year and attended Jewish Disability Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill in February 2017 and 2018.

Fishbein’s professional experience includes a policy internship with the National Center for Learning Disabilities, where he provided extensive research support for an assessment of every state’s Every Students Succeeds Act plan and how it affects students with disabilities. He also worked two stints as an intern for Sen. Art Haywood, who represents his home district in the Pennsylvania Senate. There, he assisted the staff with constituent services and legislative research. He also interned at the nonprofit Jewish Learning Venture where he worked closely with the director of the Whole Community Inclusion program to refine and promote its work on disability advocacy.

Fishbein came to this Fellowship because RespectAbility is the type of organization where he could see himself working after college. He is especially interested in advancing public policy related to disability rights, particularly in education and employment policy.

Although he recognizes the progress already made to empower and accommodate students and young adults with disabilities, he views the inequalities in education faced by children with disabilities to be the most pressing issue in the disability community. Fishbein looks forward to helping recruit and manage RespectAbility’s volunteer corps and advance Jewish inclusion efforts through the weekly Shabbat Smile newsletter.

Fishbein wrote four pieces during the 2019 Summer Fellowship. Read them on our website:

• The Employables Showcases People with Disabilities on the Job Hunt (June 5, 2019)
• Shabbat Smile by Adam Fishbein (June 6, 2019)
• Criminal justice and disability experts tackle school-to-prison pipeline of students with disabilities (August 30, 2019)
• Sexism in the Journalism Industry: Daily Beast Columnist Eleanor Clift Speaks to RespectAbility Summer Fellows (July 1, 2019)
• Criminal justice and disability experts tackle school-to-prison pipeline of students with disabilities
  (August 30, 2019)
• Young Philadelphian connects passion for Judaism and disability rights at Washington disability advocacy group (September 13, 2019)

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National Leadership Program, Summer 2019

Molly McConville

Molly McConville was a Policy Fellow in RespectAbility’s National Leadership Program, and is now the Senior Development and Individual Giving Associate at RespectAbility. RespectAbility is a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for people with disabilities.

McConville graduated from Miami University with a Bachelor of Arts in international studies and a concentration in global cultural studies. She was a minor in Spanish and spent a junior semester studying in Barcelona through the Council on International Educational Exchange.

On campus, McConville was an active member of Best Buddies International, a program that connects individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to friends, employment opportunities, leadership development programs and living arrangements.

Her passion for disability rights stems from her personal relationships with family members and friends living with physical and intellectual disabilities and witnessing firsthand the discrimination they experience. McConville joined RespectAbility because of her belief that people with disabilities deserve the same opportunities as anyone else. She is looking forward to helping advance rights for people with disabilities while gaining experience in public policy, enhancing her professional writing skills and learning from professionals in the fields of business, disability and government.

McConville’s passions include traveling, pursuing social justice for disadvantaged populations and volunteering with the charity her family established, In the Name of the Mother. This organization raises funds for impoverished mothers who are fighting cancer, providing them with financial assistance for rent, utilities, medical needs, food, wigs, clothing and more.

After graduation, McConville hoped to teach English in South America before moving back to Washington, D.C. to pursue a career advocating for marginalized communities.

McConville contributed to a Maryland press release and wrote an article covering the RespectAbility Capitol Hill Summit. Read them on our website:

• Uniting Together to Advance Disability Rights (September 17, 2019)
• Success Stories of Self-Advocates: Being Real with Yourself and Advocating for Yourself Unapologetically (September 20, 2019)

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National Leadership Program, Summer 2019

Elizabeth Batwinis

Elizabeth Batwinis was a Nonprofit Management Fellow in RespectAbility’s National Leadership Program for Summer 2019. RespectAbility is a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for and with people with disabilities. As of 2019, Batwinis was a rising senior at Virginia Tech where she was working toward a dual degree in psychology and human development and a minor in integrative health and wellness.

She joined RespectAbility to help end the stigma surrounding physical and developmental disabilities and mental health and to gain experience in the field. Her mother and sister are both special education teachers, which jump-started her interest in working with and supporting those with disabilities. Through this Fellowship, Batwinis hoped to learn more about RespectAbility’s inclusive philanthropy and the fight against stigmas.

Before working with RespectAbility, she spent the previous summer interning with Voices for Children Montgomery, the Court Appointed Special Advocates program in Montgomery County, Maryland which represents abused and neglected children. In high school, Batwinis was a student aid in the physical education class for the special education students, where she assisted and participated in the activities with the students. This experience helped introduce her to working and interacting with her peers from different backgrounds and spawned her drive to help others succeed.

In her free time, Batwinis enjoys teaching cycle classes, cheering on the Washington Nationals and searching for the best ice cream out there. On campus at Virginia Tech Batwinis is an active member of both her sorority and the Student Alumni Associates.

Batwinis wrote one piece during the 2019 Summer Fellowship and contributed to a Maryland press release. Read them on our website:

• Ollie Cantos Calls for Ripple Effect of Change by Building Alliances (September 7, 2019)
• Uniting Together to Advance Disability Rights (September 17, 2019)

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National Leadership Program, Summer 2019

Ana Kohout

Ana Kohout was a Nonprofit Management Fellow in RespectAbility’s National Leadership Program. RespectAbility is a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for and with people with disabilities.

Kohout was a rising junior at Beloit College, where she is a double major in education and youth studies and disability studies. She hopes to become an elementary school teacher and work toward making schools more accessible. She intends to earn her doctorate in disability studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago to better understand how to advance disability rights in schools and make them more inclusive. 

Her interest in fighting stigmas surrounding those with disabilities stems from an early age and crystallized in college. Kohout was born with spina bifida, causing her to have scattered paralysis from the waist down. She did not consider herself to be part of a marginalized group until college, when she learned about disability studies in her first-year seminar. From then on, she became passionate about disability rights and created her own interdisciplinary major in disability studies. 

Kohout has been involved with the Beloit Cross-Disability Coalition, a club on campus for people with disabilities and their allies that focuses on disability-related advocacy, education, and support; she plans to run for president of the group next semester. Next semester, she will also expand her role at her college’s Learning and Enrichment Disability Services (LEADS) office, where she was working as a learning assistant. Previously, her experience with disability mostly took place in adaptive sports. Kohout has been swimming competitively for the last 10 years and playing sled hockey for the last eight years. 

Through her Fellowship at RespectAbility, Kohout hoped to learn how to destigmatize disability and create more opportunities for people with disabilities. 

Kohout wrote three pieces during the 2019 Summer Fellowship. Read them on our website:

• Vincenzo Piscopo: Rethinking Disability by Removing Labels (August 20, 2019)
• Advice from Jonathan Koch, Emmy Award-Winning TV Producer and Entrepreneur
  (September 9, 2019)
• Young Activist Aims to Change Beliefs About People with Disabilities (September 10, 2019)

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National Leadership Program, Summer and Fall 2019

Anthony Rendolph Clarke Brown II

Anthony Rendolph Clarke Brown II was a Communications Fellow at RespectAbility. RespectAbility is a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for people with disabilities. Brown was born with hydrocephalus, excess fluid in the brain, and a slight form of cerebral palsy. He developed mild seizures later in life. Disability advocacy became an avenue he wanted to explore after going to a resume and cover letter workshop and speaking with Nancy Forsythe, the Career Development Disabilities Specialist for the University of Maryland. She referred him to RespectAbility and their Fellowship program.

Brown graduated from the University of Maryland College Park with a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature in December 2018.

Sports writing became a passion of Brown’s when he joined Bishop McNamara High School’s newspaper as a sports staff writer in his junior year (2010). The next year, he went onto become one of the sports editors. When he joined the newspaper staff at Prince George’s Community College in 2012, he held the managing editor position the semester before transferring to the University of Maryland in 2014.

He currently writes recruiting profiles for football and basketball athletes in high schools and junior colleges across the United States for PorterMedium.com. This is work he has continued to pursue with the new site after a three-year stint writing for the Sports Rants and Dimoro Sports sites housed under Elite Rank Media.

At the start of his tenure at Maryland, he was recruited to join FanSided Network’s The Baltimore Wire blog covering Terps football and basketball. He continues to write for the network, where he primarily covers Terps basketball for its Busting Brackets college basketball site.

Prior to those roles, he wrote for the Maryland Terrapins and Washington Redskins SB Nation sites’ Testudo Times and Hogs Haven, respectively.

Last summer, Brown interned for the Voice of America’s Africa Division, where he gained valuable video editing skills. He worked with Dalet Plus, multimedia editing software, to create B-roll packages for the daily edition of Africa 54. He also ran the teleprompter and live streaming for the show and tracked voice-overs for its packages.

A native of Clinton, Maryland, Brown joined RespectAbility to gain more experience with social media and website management and learn more about nonprofit work in disability advocacy.

Brown wrote several pieces during the 2019 Summer and Fall Fellowships. Read them on our website:

• Rep. Brad Sherman Speaks About Congress-Constituent Relations at RespectAbility Summit
  (August 17, 2019)
• Young Self-Advocate Utilizing Journalism Background to Ensure Better Representation of Disability
  (September 16, 2019)
• Uniting Together to Advance Disability Rights (September 17, 2019)
• Larry Lipman: Starting Small in Journalism Pays Big Dividends in Impact (November 25, 2019)

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National Leadership Program, Summer 2019

Sarah Meehan

Sarah Meehan was a Political Communications Fellow in RespectAbility’s National Leadership Program for Summer 2019. RespectAbility is a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for and with people with disabilities.

Meehan joined RespectAbility to continue her longstanding advocacy for people with disabilities, including herself. Meehan was diagnosed with anxiety in the sixth grade. With the help of her family, she was determined to get the care she needed, through therapy and mindfulness techniques that would indefinitely support her mental health.

In her senior year of high school, she developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from a sexual violence assault. That year was one of the most challenging yet rewarding years of her life. Along the way, she realized her true passion for wanting to help other people that have encountered sexual violence. She was determined to work in a field that would help her advocate for people that have gone through sexual violence, especially people with disabilities.

As a student at Virginia Commonwealth University, she was not originally planning to become a social work major and psychology minor, but she soon decided this was her calling. She became the co-founder and vice president of a new organization on campus called the Association of Students with Disabilities or Chronic Conditions (A.S.D.C.C), which aims to support and advocate for students with disabilities and/or chronic conditions. Meehan is now the incoming president of the organization and has big plans to keep the organization striving to include people with disabilities or chronic conditions.

Meehan joined Alpha Xi Delta, a sorority on campus that partners with autism-related causes for its philanthropy, and has been involved as the group’s parent relations director.

Meehan plans to acquire her master’s in social work at Virginia Commonwealth University. She wants to work in mental health education and outreach with a focus on sexual violence.

Meehan wrote one piece during the 2019 Summer Fellowship. Read it on The RespectAbility Report:

• Rep. Seth Moulton Speaks Candidly About PTSD, Crushing Stigmas (June 9, 2019)

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National Leadership Program, Summer 2019

Angelica Vega

Angelica Vega was a Policy Fellow in RespectAbility’s National Leadership Program. RespectAbility is a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for people with disabilities. Vega was a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences at American University in Washington, D.C. She is majoring in philosophy and minoring in public health. Also, she is enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences Leadership and Ethical Development Program (CAS LEAD). CAS Lead is designed to teach and empower students to become effective and ethical leaders through its rigorous, four-year certificate program.

As a person with a disability and woman of color, Vega is passionate about fighting stigmas and promoting diversity and inclusion in schools and the workplace.

As an arts coordinator at the Pop-Up Library, a free-to-access library at the Woodbridge Mall in New Jersey, Vega helped design a community mural and encourage citizens to visit the place. Vega went on to research the importance of libraries at the CAS LEAD Interdisciplinary Symposium. And this summer, as a recipient of American University’s Robyn Rafferty Mathias Undergraduate Summer Fellowship program, she will work with a faculty mentor to explore why public spaces such as public-school libraries help bridge the accessibility gap in education and develop engaged citizens.

Before joining RespectAbility, Vega won the 2018 Lime Connect Fellowship, the flagship U.S. program of a global nonprofit for people with disabilities that helps rising college juniors compete for selective jobs and internships. The program helps students with disabilities to self-advocate in the workplace. Vega’s experience with Lime Connect has made her interested in disability employment policies.

Vega also founded “A Higher Bridge,” a summer program to help high school students prepare for college. She writes career advice blogs on her website and plans lectures for all students. Vega hopes that this program can become a resource for libraries.

Vega is currently working as a campus ambassador for Jopwell, a diversity hiring startup to connect major companies such as Amazon and J.P. Morgan with Black, Latinx and Native American students and professionals.

Also, she is the historian of Phi Sigma Pi (PSP), a gender-inclusive national honor fraternity. As a historian, she is responsible for maintaining a written history of the chapter as well as managing and documenting ritual events.

Vega is looking forward to giving back to her school by becoming a teacher’s assistant (TA) in the fall. She will assistant teach “Theories of Democracy and Human Rights” in the College of Arts and Sciences at American University.

In her free time, Angelica likes to play video games, hang out with her friends, volunteer and read philosophy books. She also likes to travel to new and exciting restaurants around Washington, D.C.

Below are the pieces Vega wrote for RespectAbility publications:

• Book worm to policy wonk: Disability advocate brings her knowledge to Washington, D.C.
  (September 12, 2019)
• Vote with our Voice – National Voter Registration Day (September 24, 2019)

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