Cara Reedy is a journalist, actor, comedian, and film director from St. Louis, Missouri. She spent ten years working at CNN, producing documentaries and writing for various verticals like Eatocracy and CNN Business. In 2019, she co-produced “Dwarfism and Me,” a documentary for the Guardian about persons living with dwarfism and America’s treatment of them. She now works at Storyline Partners, a collection of organizations that collaborates with the entertainment industry “to promote accurate, authentic, and equitable cultural narratives in television and film.” She is on the advisory board of the National Center on Disability and Journalism at Arizona State University and is currently building the U.S.-based Disabled Journalists Association.

Jason Strother is an American multimedia journalist who covers the news through the lens of disability and accessibility. After working overseas as a freelance reporter for 15 years, he returned to his home state of New Jersey in 2021 and launched Lens15 Media, which produces news content for and about 15 percent of the world’s population that has a physical, sensory, or learning difference. He also advises on best practices for covering this community as well as making real and virtual spaces more inclusive. Strother’s work is informed by his own experience of having low vision, and his stories have been published by The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, the BBC, and many other US and international outlets. He is also a 2020 National Geographic Explorer and an adjunct professor at Montclair State University, where he’s created a course on disability representation in media.  

Marcus E. Howard is a journalism professor at Northeastern University School of Journalism and an award-winning journalist who has written for Reuters, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Savannah Morning News, among other media outlets. His scholarly interests focus on examining the role of media in democratization with an emphasis on race, culture, and social movements.

Howard’s media literacy book, “How Journalists and the Public Shape our Democracy: From Social Media and ‘Fake News’ to Reporting Just the Facts,” (2019) was published by the Georgia Humanities Council in association with the Atlanta Press Club.

Rahul Bhargava is an educator, researcher, designer, and facilitator who works on data storytelling and technology design in support of social justice and community empowerment. His workshops have been bringing people together around data with engaging activities since 2010. Bhargava is co-creator of the Data Culture Project, which helps individuals and organizations build their data capacity in creative ways. He combines a background in interactive robotics, education, and effective data presentation to build creative and playful activities that introduce data literacy in appropriate ways to a variety of audiences. Bhargava argues that our toolbox for telling data stories is far too small, and engages the approaches and materials of the arts in support of building a wider set of projects and practices. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Art + Design at Northeastern University, where he founded and leads the Data Culture Group. This academic research group builds collaborative projects to interrogate our datafied society, with a focus on rethinking participation and power in data process.

Bhargava’s work has long had connections to equity and justice for people with disabilities. His Master’s thesis focused on collaboratively designing and building a robotic construction kit for students with blindness and visual impairments. Bhargava’s work with a small set of students revealed how they built cognitive models about feedback loops, essential for robotics work, differently and faster than students without visual impairments. More recently, he integrated early efforts to make charts and graphs more accessible via screen readers into his Data Culture Project website. In his spare time, Bhargava occasionally works on custom-made accessibility devices with a family member with quadriplegia.

Mike Beaudet is a journalism professor at Northeastern University in Boston and an investigative reporter at WCVB-TV, Boston’s ABC affiliate. He’s worked in local television news for more than 25 years. Beaudet started his career in radio covering politics at the Massachusetts State House and also made stops at television stations in Bangor, Maine, and Manchester, New Hampshire. Before joining WCVB-TV, he was an investigative reporter and anchor at WFXT-TV FOX25 in Boston.

During the pandemic, Beaudet reported extensively on the challenges facing individuals with disabilities as COVID-19 cases spiked in group homes and other residential settings. He examined the toll the pandemic took on people with disabilities who were often isolated in their homes and unable to participate in outside activities. As Massachusetts began vaccinating people, Beaudet raised questions about why people with disabilities weren’t eligible for vaccines earlier.

Beaudet has won numerous awards, including 20 New England Emmys. His most recent Emmys came in 2021 when he was named Outstanding Investigative Reporter. Beaudet’s reporting has also been recognized repeatedly by the Associated Press and the Radio Television Digital News Association. Beaudet’s research at Northeastern focuses on the future of local television news and finding new ways to grow the audience and engage younger viewers both on-air and online.

A human rights filmmaker, Jody Santos (she/her) has traveled to some 30 countries across five continents, documenting everything from the trafficking of girls in Nepal to the widespread and often abusive practice of institutionalizing children with disabilities in the U.S. and other countries. Santos became involved in disability justice after her son was diagnosed with autism and she began to navigate the various systems – educational, medical, etc. – that seemed to exclude if not actively work against persons with disabilities.

Santos is an associate teaching professor at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism. Her documentaries have appeared on public television and cable networks like Discovery Channel, and her work also has been featured on New England Public Radio and in advocacy journals like Mad in America. Regardless of the medium, Santos’s goal has been to highlight those narratives that are usually unseen or deliberately underreported.

Santos is the recipient of American Women in Radio & Television’s Gracie Allen Award, and she was nominated for an Emmy for a special report on black-market guns airing on NBC Boston. Her book, Daring to Feel: Violence, the News Media, and Their Emotions, was published by Rowman & Littlefield’s Lexington Books division in 2009.

Priti Salian is a Bengaluru-based independent journalist and has reported from India, Germany, and Uganda on global health, human rights, social justice, development, and culture. More specifically, she has covered issues of disability, gender, education, health care, and aging. Her work has appeared across seven countries in the Guardian, the BBC, National Geographic, NBC News, Public Radio International, Devex, Stanford Social Innovation Review, The British Medical Journal, The Lancet, CityLab, The Christian Science Monitor, South China Morning Post, Al Jazeera, and The National, among others. 

In 2019, Salian was a fellow of Robert Bosch Foundation in Germany, and in 2022 she traveled to Oxford on a fellowship with Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism where she conducted research on disability inclusion in Indian newsrooms. Her paper “A 9-step plan for “curb-cutting” disability access in Indian news and newsrooms” is a result of the study. 

She is a TEDx speaker and a contributor to the ethical travel anthology Tread Brightly. 

Grace Rountree (she/they) is a community organizer, human rights advocate, and visual artist. Grace’s background as a paralegal specializing in humanitarian immigration law informs her commitment to building transnational solidarity and fighting for progressive change at the intersection of disability justice and migrant rights issues. They are passionate about centering accessibility in social movement spaces and are experienced in organizing around human rights issues, particularly related to U.S. imperialism in the Global South. As audience engagement coordinator with the Disability Justice Project, she will create content and develop strategy across social media platforms.

Desmond LaFave (he/him) is an aspiring documentary filmmaker. He’s interested in adapting traditional video production methods to tell compelling human-centered stories. LaFave is in his final year at Northeastern University, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Media & Screen Studies. He recently worked at a public access television station in Boston, broadcasting city government events and meetings.

Ziyu Peng is a video producer and a first-year graduate student in Northeastern University’s Media Innovation program in the School of Journalism. His passion for media and creative art motivates him to learn more stories, exchange ideas, and share opinions that bond with a global audience. Peng is now training to be skillful at long-form storytelling and a storyteller with humanistic sight.

Francine Uwayisaba is a field officer at Rwanda Union of Little People (RULP) and is in charge of the organization’s communications. She writes grants, manages RULP’s social media, and composes articles and weekly updates for the website. She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism and communication from the University of Rwanda and has been a freelance contributor to the Disability Justice Project since the fall of 2022. She is trained in basic sign language; disability inclusion in HIV interventions; disability, sexuality, and rights; and gender balancing. She also works as an actor in dubbing movies from international languages to Kinyarwanda.

Sakdiyah Ma’ruf is Indonesia’s first Muslim female stand-up comic. Her comedy promotes dialogue, peace, and gender equality. She has performed in Indonesia, Australia, Sweden, Norway, and Mesir. Ma’ruf’s comedic work has been featured in Comedy Jihad, Born A Women, etc., Indonesia Seharusnya Rumah, Bersama, and other shows. She is the co-founder and main facilitator of “Our Voice for Change,” a women and youth initiative and comedy workshop promoting social change through comedy.

Ma’ruf is also a certified conference interpreter and translator who has 12 years of experience. Her translation works pertain to but are not limited to women’s rights, children and youth’s rights, disability rights, public health, sexual and reproductive health and rights, politics and democracy, disaster, emergency, environmental issues, and humanitarian issues. Ma’ruf is fluent in providing simultaneous, consecutive, and/or whispering interpreting services, including RSI (Remote Simultaneous Interpreting) at conferences, workshops, FGDs, press conferences, and webinars. Moreover, she has experience with translating documents, legal documents, and books.

Dan Zedek heads a design studio specializing in content-driven design and strategy. As creative director of The Boston Globe and BostonGlobe.com, he led the print and digital design, news development, data visualization, and infographics teams, building an award-winning visual brand. The Society for News Design named BostonGlobe.com “The World’s Best Designed News Site” at launch. Prior to the Globe, he was a designer or art director at numerous local and national publications, including Natural Health, Seattle Weekly, The Dallas Observer, Parenting, Guitar World, and the Village Voice. Zedek is a professor of the practice at the Northeastern University School of Journalism where he leads master’s degree studios in Media Innovation.

Eric helped code this website. He’s an inclusive design advocate, writer, developer, and speaker. He helps maintain The A11Y Project, a community-driven effort to make digital accessibility easier. If you encountered an access barrier while using this site, please let him know.