Bob Williams, Commissioner of Administration on Developmental Disabilities, will speak at a colloquium sponsored by the Office of Programs for Handicapper Students and the All-University Diversity Committee. The event will be held Thursday, Dec. 5, from 3 - 5 p.m. in 106 Kellogg Center.
Williams, nationally known for his articulate advocacy and strategic leadership in disability policy, has lived with cerebral palsy all his life.
\Bob Williams is the kind of person who reminds us again that we need to look at abilities, not disabilities, when we hire and promote," said Donna Shalala, Health and Human Services Secretary, in 1993 at Williams' appointment.
Williams, 37, has held many influential positions in the United States. After graduating from George Washington University, he was a Policy Associate with the United Cerebral Palsy Associations, Inc., where he played a key role in gaining passage of the ADA and in promoting personal assistance services. Williams also served as a program analyst for the Youth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., in 1983 and as a staff assistant on the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Handicapped (now the Subcommittee on Disability Policy) in 1981-82. He has been president of Hear Our Voices, an organization for people who rely on augmentative communication devices, and served as vice-president of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps.
Williams advocates and believes in community - not just as a place to live, but as a complete way of life, for all of us. Much of his time is spent as an effective consensus builder for policy change, working toward a shift in disability policy away from exclusion toward inclusion, from dependence toward independence, from paternalism toward empowerment.