Jerron Herman is a dancer and writer who is compelled to create images of freedom. His process is supported by personal histories and social legacies of disability aesthetics that undermine notions of production in favor of welcoming. The nuanced pieces Jerron exhibits contend with an early childhood desire to create many worlds in which others inhabit.

Ryan is a highly experienced and accomplished individual with a strong background in adaptive and inclusive sports. Currently he is the Director of Inclusive and Adaptive Sports for the City University of New York (CUNY). This portfolio includes a Men’s and Women’s wheelchair basketball teams, as well as emerging wheelchair tennis and track programs.

Ryan was recognized as the 2022 College Coach of the Year by the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC). The CUNY Adaptive Sports program is the only intercollegiate adaptive sports program on the East coast. The program has been in existence for three years and competes in the intercollegiate division of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association (NWBA).

Originally, Ryan attended Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU) on a wheelchair basketball scholarship. He went on to graduate with a degree in Secondary Education with an emphasis in Sociology and a minor in Pre-Law. Following graduation, he moved to Madrid, Spain to pursue a career in wheelchair basketball. He would go on to spend 10 seasons in Europe: eight in Spain and two seasons in France. The European leagues represent the only place to play professional wheelchair basketball. During this time Ryan began promoting and advocating for inclusive sports and helping athletes with disabilities live independent and fulfilling lives through speaking engagements and camps.

While playing professionally in Europe, Ryan began to prepare for life after basketball. He founded his own non-profit, the Ryan Martin Foundation (RMF), where he is currently the Executive Director. RMF’s mission is to help youth and adult athletes with disabilities live independent, impassioned, productive, and full lives through sports training, mentoring, and education. Since 2007, RMF has run youth-based wheelchair programs in domestically in Connecticut, and internationally in Madrid, Spain.

Today, Ryan's work continues through supporting wheelchair basketball for youth with disabilities and doing consulting work around best practices of inclusion for individuals with disabilities. In 2014, Ryan was recognized as a member of the “40 under 40” class by Connecticut Magazine for his work in the non-profit sector. In 2018, Ryan was recognized once again as member of the “40 Under 40” class for his work in the non-profit space by the Hartford Business Journal. Ryan was named as the Junior Celtics Coach of the Year in 2020 for his work in growing junior wheelchair basketball in the region.

Seeking to expand his education further, Ryan returned to school and in 2024 completed a master's degree in Disability Studies at the CUNY School of Professional Studies.

Most recently, Ryan served as the President of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association (NWBA) and helps oversee the USA High Performance Program which includes the Men’s and Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Paralympic Teams. In that role, Ryan manages key relationship with NWBA stakeholders such as USOPC and Toyota. He also serves as the Vice President of the 21st Century Tolland Fund, which has supported athletes and athletic programs in the state of Connecticut for over forty years.

Writer, activist, and music archivist Leroy Franklin Moore Jr. was born with cerebral palsy in New York City. Chair of the Black Disability Studies Committee for the National Black Disability Coalition, founder of the Krip-Hop Nation project, and cofounder of the performance art collective Sins Invalid, Moore’s writing, lectures, and performances illuminate intersections between racism and ableism both in the United States and abroad. His lecture series “On the Outskirts: Race & Disability” grew from his experiences with the Black disability movement in London. Krip-Hop emerged from his interest in Black musicians marginalized because of their disabilities. “The mission of Krip-Hop Project,” Moore has written, “is to get the musical talents of hip-hop artists with disabilities into the hands of media outlets, educators, hip-hop, disabled and race scholars, youth, hip-hop conference coordinators, and agents and to report the latest news about musicians with disabilities.”

Moore’s publications include Black Disabled Ancestors (2020), the graphic novel Krip-Hop Vol. 1 (2019), the children’s book Black Disabled Art History 101 (2017), and the spoken word CD and chapbook Black Disabled Man with a Big Mouth and Hi I.Q. He writes a regular column titled “Illin-N-Chillin” for POOR Magazine. He is a leading activist regarding police brutality and wrongful incarceration of people with disabilities.

Ashley Shew is an associate professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech. Her current research sits at the intersection of technology studies, biotech ethics, and disability studies. She is recipient of an NSF CAREER Award for work on disability narrative about technology (#1750260, Disability, Experience, and Technological Imagination, 2018-2023), and a principal investigator of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Higher Learning project that supports the creation of a regional Disability Community Technology (DisCoTec) Center providing guidance for developing disabled-led technology and disability-forward technological futures through humanities-based scholarship and disability justice education, arts, and outreach (Just Dis Tech Project, 2023-2025). Shew’s recent book Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (2023) and forthcoming open textbook, co-edited with Hanna Herdegen, Technology and Disability, both focus on the stories disabled people tell about technologies that people do not always expect.

Ashley’s past work has been in philosophy of technology with particular interest in technological knowledge, animal studies, and emerging technologies. She is a current co-editor-in-chief (with Kirk Besmer) of Techné, the journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. She is sole author of Technological Knowledge and Animal Constructions (2017) and co-editor of three philosophy of technology volumes: Spaces for the Future (with Joe Pitt, 2017), Feedback Loops (with Andrew Garnar, 2020), and Reimagining Philosophy and Technology, Reinventing Ihde (with Glen Miller, 2020).

Shew believes in cross-disciplinary, cross-disability, and public-facing scholarship: she has written for IEEE Technology & Society, Nursing Clio, Nature, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed. She is a grateful participant with her local disability advocacy and activist community in the Disability Alliance and Caucus at Virginia Tech and the New River Valley Disability Resource Center.

At Virginia Tech, Shew participates as a faculty member in the STS PhD program, Medicine & Society minor, and Disability Studies minor; she’s also the current director of the Bioethics graduate certificate, and a longtime executive committee member with the Integrative Graduate Education Program on Regenerative Medicine.

Andrew Marcum, Ph.D. is Academic Director and Distinguished Lecturer for Disability Studies at the CUNY School of Professional Studies. From 2016-2022 he served as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Disability Studies at SPS and Program Coordinator for the Center for Self-Advocacy in Buffalo, NY. He also served as Research Assistant and Presenter for the First-Responders Disability Awareness Training Program at Niagara University in Lewiston, NY from 2018-2021. His education includes a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico and an M.A. in American Studies from the University of Alabama.

Dr. Marcum is a former dissertation research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. and a former Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access at the University at Buffalo. He is the recipient of numerous academic and community awards including a Bilinski Foundation Dissertation Writing Fellowship and the Voice Buffalo Community Commitment Award. He has been recognized by the New York State Senate and the Erie County, NY Office for People with Disabilities for his advocacy and work in support of self-advocacy and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Dr. Marcum holds certificates in Disability Awareness Training and Sexuality Education for Youth with Disabilities. His scholarly publications include "Rethinking the American 'Dream' Home: The Disability Rights Movement and the Cultural Politics of Accessible Housing in the United States," in Disabling Domesticity. Edited by Michael A. Rembis. New York: Palgrave/McMillan, December 2016, "'Free Our People': A Disability Studies Perspective on Wellbeing," in Wellbeing as a Multi-Dimensional Concept: Understanding Connections between Culture, Community, and Health. Edited by Janet Page-Reeves. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019, and "Exposing Sexual Ableism: A Review of Already Doing It: Intellectual Disability and Sexual Agency by Michael Gill." Disability Studies Quarterly, Fall 2015.

Dr. Le Lay's research broadly explores how people working in organizational contexts, ranging from instructional designers to vision care professionals, use language, images, documents, methods, and technologies in ways that prioritize the needs, interests, values, and wellbeing of people with radically diverse bodies and minds. Dr. Le Lay is particularly interested in better understanding the successes and challenges involved in doing disability-inclusive work given the dynamic complexity of stakeholders' embodied experiences and the many constraints upon our time, knowledge, skills, resources, and mind/body capacities.

In one ongoing project, Dr. Le Lay examines institutional arrangements that both enable and constrain disability-inclusive work. The project draws on interviews with university-based advocates for disability inclusion, including teachers, researchers, administrators, and practitioners. The focus includes aspects such as learning management systems, training programs, policies, committees, and communities of practice.

Dr. Le Lay has presented his individual and collaborative research at conferences such as the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Design of Communication; the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine Symposium; the Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine; and the National Communication Association.

As a teacher (and forever student) of critical disability studies, Dr. Le Lay strives to equip current and aspiring change-makers with the professional development practices, systems thinking tools, and communicative strategies needed to build cross-functional coalitions and transform organizational structures.

Prior to joining the CUNY SPS faculty, Dr. Le Lay taught courses in first-year writing, science communication, rhetoric and the media, technical writing, and visual rhetoric and document design. He earned a doctorate in Rhetoric, Scientific & Technical Communication from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.