Los Angeles, California, June 18 – Announced on the first day of RespectAbility’s Summer Lab, RespectAbility’s Vice President of Communications Lauren Appelbaum was announced as a recipient of The Roddenberry Foundation Impact Award in partnership with Propper Daley’s A Day of Unreasonable Conversation for this innovative Lab program.

“Our goal is to support creators who are fighting to break down barriers to access and representation, and to erase limits on the type of stories we tell, who gets to tell them, and how,” explained Greg Propper, President of Propper Daley and Founder of A Day of Unreasonable Conversation. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, California, June 17, 2020 – John Lawson is a man who wears quite a few hats: he is an award-winning writer and director, he has acted in notable shows such as Law and Order: SVU, American Horror Story: Freakshow and Switched At Birth, and is a certified pilot and scuba instructor. And those are just a few of his many accomplishments.

Speaking to the 30 participants and five-member programmatic team of RespectAbility’s Summer Lab, Lawson began his talk with the story of being forced to accept his disability. He lost both of his hands in an electrical accident that occurred while he was working. Even though he lost what most of us consider vital body parts, Lawson referred to two quotes that helped him process an inevitable new chapter of his life: [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, California, June 16, 2020 – The 2020 RespectAbility Summer Lab kicked off with an informative keynote on navigating film industry politics and virtual networking tips with activist Whitney Davis. Davis’ talk emphasized themes of self-worth, career-growth and deeply rooted issues within big-name corporations. She offered tips from her own experience growing from a Page to becoming an executive for CBS.

“Something I wish I’d known early in my career is: don’t be afraid to use your voice,” Davis told the 30 participants and five-member programmatic team of the Lab. “Using one’s voice and knowing that you bring something special into every room that you walk into—which has nothing to do with the outward appearance or ability or disability—but just who you are as a person, and being confident in. That is all the executive presence you need.” [continue reading…]

Platinum Seal allows donors and stakeholders to focus on progress and results

Rockville, Maryland, June 14 – RespectAbility, a diverse, disability-led nonprofit organization whose mission is to fight stigmas and advance opportunities so people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of community, today earned the 2020 Platinum Seal of Transparency, the highest level of recognition offered by GuideStar, a service of Candid. By sharing metrics that highlight progress RespectAbility is making toward its mission, the organization is helping donors move beyond simplistic ways of nonprofit evaluation such as overhead ratios.

“In accordance with our long-held belief in being transparent about our work, we are excited to convey our organization’s results in a user-friendly and highly visual manner,” said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, Founder of RespectAbility. “By updating our GuideStar Nonprofit Profile to remain at the Platinum level, we are continuing to share a wealth of up-to-date organizational metrics with our supporters as well as GuideStar’s immense online audience, which includes stakeholders, donors, grantmakers, our peers and the media.” [continue reading…]

Rockville, Maryland, June 13 – If you watched the 90s TV show “Unsolved Mysteries,” then you might have seen a profile of a young boy named Philip Pauli. That episode profiled Philip for his high IQ, his reputation as a “boy genius” and his wide range of talents at a young age. Indeed, at six months of age, Philip began to talk. By eighteen months he was reading and by age three, he began to play the violin and study astronomy. The episode features Philip at his chosen playground of the Denver Museum of Natural History and working at an archeological dig.

Since that time, Philip continued his extraordinary journey. While an honors student at the University of Denver, he was chosen to spend a year studying at Oxford University. Ten years ago, he moved to Washington, D.C., to pursue a master’s degree in social policy from The George Washington University.

Philip chose a career in public policy because these are deeply personal issues for him. He achieved and experienced so much because of the support of a single mother with significant chronic health disabilities who taught him compassion and kindled in him a deep commitment to justice. [continue reading…]

Sponsors include Cast & Crew, Comcast NBCUniversal, Final Draft, Fox Corporation, Murray/Reese Foundation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, ViacomCBS and The Walt Disney Company

Summer Lab 2019 participants at The Walt Disney Studios. Credit: Jeff Maynard

Los Angeles, California, June 11 – After unprecedented competition from around the world, 30 individuals have been accepted into RespectAbility’s second annual Lab for Entertainment Professionals. This 5-week, 15-session virtual summer Lab series for talented people with disabilities interested in – and with experience in – development, production and post-production, including careers as writers, directors, producers, cinematographers, animators and other production roles, will take place June 16 – July 16, 2020. Participants include diverse people with physical, cognitive, sensory, mental health and other disabilities.

“This program continues building the talent pipeline of young and mid-career professionals with disabilities working behind the scenes while also enabling hundreds of studio executives to learn about the talents and benefits of hiring people with disabilities,” said Program Director Lauren Appelbaum, RespectAbility’s Vice President, Communications who leads RespectAbility’s Hollywood Inclusion efforts and authored the nonprofit’s Hollywood Disability Inclusion Toolkit. “While we will not be on location at studios this year like in 2019, we are thankful for all the studios that will be virtually hosting us beginning on June 16.” [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, California, June 10 – A coalition of more than 40 Jewish organizations, led by the disability nonprofit RespectAbility, is pleased to announce a new Jewish Disability Access & Inclusion Training Series. This seven-part series, which will run virtually from June 23 through August 11 is a collective offering to the Jewish world so Jewish organizations can welcome, respect and include people with disabilities from all backgrounds in the important work that they do.

Jewish organizations partnering in the series include the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ), Reconstructing Judaism, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Jewish Women International (JWI) and dozens of others. Eric Fingerhut, President and CEO of JFNA said, “We will have reached a major milestone in Jewish community building when we no longer need to identify ways to remove barriers to participation.” [continue reading…]

I hope that you are staying safe and healthy. Before I begin our weekly exploration of Jewish disability inclusion, I must begin the Shabbat Smile by noting that this is a gut-wrenching time in our nation. We are all dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and massive job loss challenges. Now the uprisings taking place across America have illuminated the impact of racism on society. The recent murders of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and Breonna Taylor by Louisville Metro police are a reminder that key parts of our criminal justice system are broken. The false accusal of two Black men for the drowning of Alejandro Ripley, a nonverbal 9-year-old with Autism, offers another example of the harmful impact of discrimination. [continue reading…]

Question: What do Shavuot (Shavuos) and COVID-19 have in common? Answer: The call for faith, prayer, and hope . . . and the comfort of cheesy (or non-cheesy) blintzes (or gluten-free blintzes). It is also said that if you put two blintzes side by side on your plate, then you have the visual image of a Torah. Nice, right? Experiential learning. [continue reading…]