Who We Are

Liz Michaels

Disability Doula, Community Care Worker, and Advocate

Liz (she/her) uses an anti-oppression lens to create relationships and spaces where people feel seen, heard, and valued. She leads with curiousity about clients’ lived experiences, interests, feelings, and strengths. By deepening her understanding of and connection with clients, she is able to collaborate with them to facilitate access to resources that work with their identities to meet their needs and goals.

Liz has made it her mission to affect change that profoundly honors disabled, sick, mad/mentally ill people, and their authentic ways of being in the world. Her approach is deeply informed by the lived experiences of marginalized communities, intersectional justice work, inclusive education, trauma studies, art therapy, Eastern healing practices, and neuroscience. She is committed to helping clients step into their authentic power in a way that honors both personal liberation and collective well-being. She is passionate about creating safe(r), identity-affirming, and culturally sustaining space, particularly for disabled, chronically ill, BIPOC, queer folks and trauma survivors. She engages in ongoing unlearning of her own social conditioning, which she holds as critical to this work.

 

Her Why

Liz’s commitment to supporting disabled folks was sparked by her own experiences in spaces and systems that are not designed for the many ways that she learns, thinks, feels, knows, moves, produces, and exists as a disabled and chronically ill person. As someone who has experienced the ways in which disability is constructed as a problem to be solved, it means a lot to her to hold a space where people are always enough and never a burden.

Liz has improved access for a caseload of 222 disabled students at the college level, promoted the inclusion of disabled people in DEI initiatives, and guided countless colleagues in deepening their understanding of ableism. After a decade advancing equity and dignity for disabled people in non-profits, educational settings, therapy centers, disability services agencies, higher education, and research institutes, she has created a space where she can be her authentic self while providing others with healing resources. Her path towards eastern healing modalities is a result of her own experience of disability and chronic illness.

 

 

The Journey

Early in her career, Liz taught visual art and facilitated therapeutic art for adults and children, including students with developmental and intellectual disabilities without access to communication placed in group homes functioning as modern-day institutions. Her commitment to combatting the dehumanization of her students and ensuring communication rights led Liz to seek immersive training in a wide range of user-supported methodologies that strengthen the mind-body connection necessary for multimodal text-based augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). She has developed AAC skills with individual clients, trained families and support staff, designed accessible academic programs, and implemented multimodal text-based AAC in classroom settings. Liz knows that with the right support, all disabled people can communicate their thoughts, questions, boundaries, dreams, and resistance in words, and that open communication is a human right. Her work continues to be guided by disabled and multiply marginalized folks’ lived experiences at the intersections communication, education, and the medical industrial complex, particularly those of nonspeakers who could only obtain access to communication in their own words outside of systems as a result of being labeled nonverbal. Outside of work, you can find her hiking, reading, and spending time with the people and animals who bring her joy.

Credentials

 

 

 

 

MS Teaching & Curriculum: Inclusive Special Education & Disability Studies, 2021, Syracuse University

CAS Disability Studies, 2021, Syracuse University

BA Studio Art, 2014, Vassar College

Accessible Yoga 200-Hour Teacher Training, Accessible Yoga School

Usui Holy Fire Reiki, Level 1 and 2, Innergetic Alchemy

 

Training Internships

Art therapy, Create Arts Center, 2016

Supported typing research, Hussman Institute for Autism, 2016-2018

Pointing to letters to communicate, Growing Kids Therapy Center, 2016-2017

 

 

Crosby

Director of Wellness and Morale

Crosby (he/him) has made it his mission to put a smile on the face of everyone he meets. Whether simply existing or providing sensory support with his weight or soft fur, he always succeeds. Outside of work, you can find Crosby hiking, chasing balls, and exploring new places.