Disability Advocate, Educator, and Bestselling Author
Rebekah Taussig will challenge everything you think you know about disability as she invites us into her experience of living in a body that looks and moves differently than most. “What would it mean for disabled folks if society saw us as acceptable, equal, valuable parts of the whole?” she writes in her memoir, Sitting Pretty: The View From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body (HarperOne). Each conference registration includes a copy of Sitting Pretty (while supplies last).
Taussig, who has been paralyzed since the age of three, is a mom, wife, author, disability advocate and educator with a Ph.D in creative nonfiction and disability studies. Before pivoting to writing, speaking, and consulting, Taussig taught passionately for almost a decade from freshmen in high school to upper-level college classes and continues to offer writing workshops. She is also one hell of a fighter on a mission to show that disabled people have incredible value; as she argues, a more inclusive world is a sturdier, kinder, more imaginative world for all of us.
A storyteller at heart with a great sense of humor, Taussig invites us to think bigger and more critically about who has a seat at the table and the barriers that bar others from inclusion. She’s held talks and workshops at the University of Michigan, Davidson College and Yale University on disability representation, identity and community, and her writing appears in publications from TIME to Refinery29. She’s been a guest on a myriad of podcasts and also runs the Instagram platform @sitting_pretty, where she crafts “mini-memoirs” for her more than 50,000 followers to contribute nuance to the collective narratives being told about disability in our culture. Taussig is the recipient of the Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in Literary Nonfiction for Sitting Pretty.
Glenna Wright-Gallo is Vice President of Strategic Research and Policy at Everway and a nationally recognized leader in inclusive education, disability policy, assistive technology, and artificial intelligence. She works with education leaders across the country to translate research, policy, and technology into practical strategies that improve outcomes for students with disabilities.
Glenna previously served as Assistant Secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) at the U.S. Department of Education, where she led implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the Rehabilitation Act. She has also served as Utah’s State Director of Special Education and Washington State’s Assistant Superintendent for Special Education.
For more than 25 years, Glenna has partnered with states, districts, educators, and families to strengthen inclusive education, improve IEP implementation, expand access to assistive technology, advance Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, and support successful transitions to postsecondary education and employment.
As an individual with a disability, Glenna brings both professional expertise and lived experience to her work. She is a frequent national speaker and advisor on inclusive education, accessibility, AI, and systems improvement, helping education leaders create schools where every student belongs, participates, and has the opportunity to succeed.
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