The Center for Disability Rights (CDR) is proud to announce that longtime disability rights activist and policy analyst L. Dara Baldwin, MPA has joined our team. Ms. Baldwin has been a part of the Independent Living movement since 2011 and we are proud to have her join CDR as the Director of National Policy.

In her position, she will lead the DC policy outreach for the passage of the Disability Integration Act (DIA) and work on several other issue areas of importance to the independent lives of those with disabilities.

For the past ten years, Dara Baldwin has been one of the few people of color and the only African American woman actively working on disability rights policy on multiple issue areas in Washington, DC. She has continuously put forth the critical race theory of Intersectionality and uses this in her activism, writing and policy work. In her decade of work, she has demanded – and made it imperative – that policy work include all people and their experiences in making the world better for all of us.

Ms. Baldwin believes that at the center of equity activism is the full person and each one of us has a responsibility to respect all and our place in society. She has worked with national and international activist to end inequity and is passionate about creating a safe, inclusive and equitable world.

CDR is a not-for-profit, community-based advocacy and service organization for all people with disabilities. CDR uses a peer model where people with disabilities show other people with disabilities how to live independently and advocate for themselves. Although the organization has a policy office in Albany, NY to advance the integration of people with disabilities in its home state, CDR has only had an intermittent presence in our nation’s Capitol. The hiring of Ms. Baldwin represents a significant step forward for the organization.