This March, Service Coordination, Inc. honors Women’s History Month by spotlighting the life-changing contributions of five trailblazing women whose courage, creativity, and leadership transformed their own personal journeys into lasting progress for disability rights and advanced disability inclusion in athletics, education, employment, and entertainment.
Turning Disability Rights Into Law
Judy Heumann was a visionary force and pioneering American activist whose life and leadership reshaped the landscape of disability rights. Often called the “mother of the Disability Rights Movement,” Heumann transformed personal barriers into collective action, proving that access, dignity, and civil rights are not privileges but promises worth fighting for.
After contracting polio at 18 months old, Heumann was left permanently paralyzed. This didn’t stop her parents from advocating for a quality childhood for her, refusing to accept exclusion as her future. Through determined advocacy, they secured her right to attend public school and rallied their community to ensure she and her peers could attend public high school as well.
Heumann earned her New York State Board of Education teaching license, becoming the first teacher in New York to use a wheelchair. Later, she moved to California to live in the resident-led Berkeley Center for Independent Living (CIL), a housing complex architecturally designed for residents with disabilities. Heumann served as CIL’s Deputy Director for seven years. The CIL greatly influenced the Independent Living Movement and was used as proof that integrating accessible design solutions in living and working spaces is achievable.
She became one of the leading voices to protect Section 504 of the 1972 Rehabilitation Act, which prohibited discrimination against Americans with disabilities by any institutions that receive federal funding. In 1977, Heumann led the historic 4-week sit-ins which resulted in the signing of Section 504. As her influence increased, she worked to establish the Independent Living Movement on a national and global scale, co-founding the World Institute on Disability and guiding the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History as it developed its materials on disability history. These efforts helped shape the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Heumann’s advocacy for disability rights included serving in several roles in the federal government, as the Assistant Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, as the first Advisor on Disability and Development at the World Bank, as the first D.C. Director for the Department on Disability Services, and as the first Special Advisor on Disability Rights for the U.S. State Department. Through these roles, Heumann helped elevate disability rights as a global civil rights issue and laid groundwork for international disability inclusion aligned with the ADA.
Judy Heumann’s legacy endures in the laws she helped secure, the movements she strengthened, and the countless advocates she inspired to demand more from the world. Her influence continues to guide generations committed to building a more accessible, inclusive future for all.
Making Disability Visible and Heard
Alice Wong was a prolific writer who empowered young creatives to share their everyday lives and experiences of ableism and built a platform to amplify their stories.
Born with a type of muscular atrophy, a rare neuromuscular disorder that restricted her mobility and strength, doctors told Wong’s parents that she would need a wheelchair and BiPap ventilator for the rest of her life.
As a student at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Wong struggled with the lack of accessibility available to her on campus. Thanks to her self-advocacy efforts, Wong worked with UCSF to build an accessible living space. After graduating with her Master’s Degree in Medical Sociology, she worked as a staff research associate in the School of Nursing and became the inaugural recipient of the Chancellor’s Disability Service Award for her work with UCSF’s Center of Personal Assistance Services, a program that promotes independent living for people with disabilities.
Wong became a public force who announced her concerns in the national conversations about protecting healthcare for people with disabilities. This led to her appointment to serve on the White House’s National Council on Disability which plays a leading role in advising Congress and the president on disability policy. In 2014, Wong launched the Disability Visibility Project, an initiative to empower more people with disabilities to voice their perspectives on navigating their disability identity through various media forms.
Alice Wong turned her lived experience into lasting impact. Through her writing and advocacy, she named ableism, expanded public understanding of disability, and created space for countless others to be heard. Her legacy lives on through the Disability Visibility Project, multiple publications – including essays in Teen Vogue and The New York Times, and the voices she amplified, ensuring that disability visibility remains not just seen, but sustained.
Challenging Culture to Drive Inclusion
Andraéa LaVant is the founder and president of LaVant Consulting Inc., a disability-centered consulting firm focused on reshaping how we think about access and inclusion. For more than 20 years, she has used storytelling and cultural strategy as tools for activism—challenging exclusion, confronting ableism, and pushing institutions toward accountability and change.
As a child, LaVant was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, which affects the central nervous system and voluntary muscle movement This did not stop her parents from encouraging her to have a quality childhood that would lead to independent living. LaVant received her degree in Public Relations in 2006 and pursued a career in Washington, D.C. She was surprised by the city’s lack of accessibility, which inspired her to become an advocate for disability inclusion. This revelation sparked her drive to be an advocate for disability inclusion and accessibility.
With more stakeholders seeking her guidance on disability inclusion, LaVant founded her disability-centered consulting firm, LaVant Consulting, Inc., where she has collaborated with Netflix, Google, Verizon, and others. The LaVant Consulting team hosted L.A.’s first fully inclusive fashion show, balancing accessibility and aesthetics and purposefully including people from historically marginalized groups in the planning and production.
LaVant was a key voice in the successful campaign to promote Netflix’s Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, the Oscar-nominated documentary about the groundbreaking summer camp where disabled children and teens built community and connection, inspiring the disability rights movement. A sought-after speaker, she has been featured in Good Morning America, NBC, Essence, Ad Age, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and more.
Through her advocacy and leadership, Andraéa LaVant continues to push industries beyond surface-level inclusion toward meaningful, systemic change, proving that access, accuracy, and lived experience must remain at the center of how we shape culture and community.
Expanding Employment Opportunity
Stirling Peebles is a communications professional and advocate who launched a job search platform for individuals with disabilities.
Peebles, who was diagnosed with Down Syndrome as a child,.navigated her school system successfully with her parents until her senior year in high school. When they were introduced to transition planning in her senior year of high school, Peebles’ learned that her transition plan didn’t include attending college. After two more years of school, she started her higher education journey with college-level courses and received several certificates. This occurred before the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was reauthorized in 2004 as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, which provided minors with disabilities with a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment.
In 2007, she joined the University of Vermont’s (UVM) Green Mountain Self-Advocates. This disability rights organization equips its members with tools to live independently and advocate for their own needs. Here, Sterling served as a dissemination coordinator and helped advance its mission to educate the public by spotlighting the multifaceted lives of people with developmental disabilities through social media content and film.
Several years later, Peebles was accepted into the Think College Vermont Program at UVM, a program designed to equip students with intellectual and developmental disabilities with the support they need to have a college experience and guidance towards their career path. In the program, she became a Dissemination Assistant, serving as a peer mentor and helping students adjust to college life.
Peebles continues her work with Green Mountain Self-Advocates and the Think College Vermont Program. She is involved in multiple initiatives to promote inclusivity in the workforce, including creating the private Facebook group “The Employment Corner,” where 950+ members help each other find adequate employment and support young adults and adults with disabilities in transitioning to supported employment.
Stirling Peebles’ work is a powerful reminder that access to opportunity should never be limited by assumptions. By transforming her own experiences into platforms for connection, mentorship, and employment, she has helped redefine what inclusion in the workforce can look like. Through leadership, community-building, and unwavering self-advocacy, Peebles continues to open doors for herself and for hundreds of others navigating the path toward meaningful, supported employment.
Redefining Strength in Sport
Brenna Huckaby’s story is one of resilience, reinvention, and refusal to be defined by limits. After a life-altering diagnosis in her teens, she transformed uncertainty into purpose, emerging as world-class athlete and a powerful advocate for disability inclusion.
Huckaby grew up training for a gymnastics scholarship to attend her hometown college, Louisiana State University. When she was 14, doctors diagnosed Huckaby with osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer. This led to Huckaby and her family deciding to amputate her right leg, ending her gymnastics career.
Going from full mobility to learning how to walk again was a challenge for Huckaby. Her hospital then offered Huckaby a different challenge: a rehabilitation ski trip, which changed her life. She chose to snowboard during the trip because it reminded her of being on a balance beam and she fell in love with the sport. Huckaby reflects, “Snowboarding wasn’t just a sport for me—it was a lifeline. It gave me a sense of freedom and a way to reconnect with my athletic self.”
Huckaby has continued her athletic journey by winning 10 medals at the World Championships in Snowboard Cross and Banked Slalom and the 2024-25 World Cup Snowboard Cross Crystal Globe on the Para Snowboard World Cup.
Using her influence, she continues to raise awareness of greater inclusion through her podcast, speaking engagements, and a media collective called Culxtured that spotlights para-athletes’ stories and brands. Founded to disrupt how para sport and disability are understood, Culxtured centers Paralympic athletes through storytelling that celebrates excellence and confronts exclusion. Their work pushes toward a future where disabled sports are fully recognized and embraced by mainstream sports culture.
Today, Brenna Huckaby’s impact extends far beyond the podium. Through her advocacy, storytelling, and continued athletic excellence, she is reshaping how disability, strength, and competition are understood on the global stage. By fighting for inclusive opportunities and amplifying para-athletes’ voices, Huckaby has ensured that her victories open doors for others, proving that representation, when paired with action, can transform sport and culture alike.
Lived Experience, Lasting Impact: A Legacy that Continues
Together, the lives and legacies of Judy Heumann, Alice Wong, Andraéa LaVant, Stirling Peebles, and Brenna Huckaby remind us that disability justice is built through courage, creativity, and collective action. Each of these women transformed lived experience into leadership, challenging exclusion, reshaping systems, and expanding what inclusion can look like. Their stories are not just history or inspiration; they are calls to action. As we honor their contributions, we are reminded that progress continues when we listen to disabled voices, center lived experience, and commit to building a world where access, dignity, and opportunity are guaranteed for all.