Each year, our world becomes ever more aware of the critical need for diversifying the voices that we hear on our panels and at our conferences and events. Starting with the laudable goal of including more women, conference planners are growing increasingly aware of the need for voices to also be diverse around race, LGBTQ+, socioeconomic status and so many more. Consistent with our mission here at RespectAbility, we hope that this increased awareness extends to voices of people with disabilities who represent as much as one-in-four of the adult population.
RespectAbility’s National Disability Speakers Bureau will be a great resource to you in providing the talent to meet this goal. We recognize that many people may be seeking speakers with disabilities to teach about disability inclusion, and many of our speakers are in fact trained to train others on this topic. With that said, there are people with disabilities with expertise in every topic, and speakers in our Bureau hold expertise in topics ranging from Art and Entertainment to Entrepreneurship, Education, Finance, Law, Psychology, Religion (of many faiths) and every vocation in between.
In the form below, you can either request one of the Speakers from our roster, or indicate a topic of interest, so that we can best match you with a Speaker to meet your goals. Please know that we have associated talent not publicly listed who may be able to match your interest on subjects not featured here.
Our Bureau is growing, and over the next year we will continue to add divisions. For now we have a Women’s Division and a Jewish Division. Further, we recognize the need to increase the number of trained speakers with disabilities. Periodically, we run training programs to train new Speakers. In the near future we will have a training cohort for Jews with disabilities. If you think this might be something in which you would be interested, please email debbief@respectability.org, Project Director for our National Disability Speakers Bureau.
