HARILYN ROUSSO is a writer, painter, educator, social worker, psychotherapist and activist who has worked in the disability rights field, with a particular emphasis on issues of women and girls with disabilities, for more than twenty-five years. She is the founder of the Networking Project for Disabled Women and Girls of the YWCA/NYC, a unique mentoring program that has been replicated widely, and the President of Disabilities Unlimited Consulting Services, which provides education and training on disability equity issues.

In addition to her memoir, Don’t Call Me Inspirational: A Disabled Feminist Talks Back,Rousso is the author of numerous publications on gender and disability, including Disabled, Female and Proud! and Strong Proud Sisters: Girls and Young Women with Disabilities (available online at http://www.centerwomenpolicy.org/pdfs/dis3.pdf and is the co-editor of Double Jeopardy, and Addressing Gender Equity in Special Education. She is also the executive producer of the award-winning documentary Positive Images: Portraits of Women with Disabilities, which was shown on PBS.

Rousso is a former board member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame, the Center for Women Policy Studies, the Ms. Foundation for Women, the Sister Fund and Educational Equity Concepts, and a former commissioner with the New York City Commission on Human Rights. In 2003, she was selected by the National Women’s History Project as an honoree for National Women’s History Month.  http://www.nwhp.org/resourcecenter/biographycenter.php

Rousso’s educational background includes a B.A. in economics from Brandeis University, graduate work in economics at Harvard University, a Masters in Education from Boston University, a Masters in Social Work from New York University, and a Certificate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from the New York School for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.  

For further information on Harilyn Rousso, check out her oral history, part of the Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Collection of Oral Histories and Archives at the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley— http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/drilm/collection/items/rousso.html

Other resources include:

• Podcast by City Access New York: http://www.cityaccessny.org/media.php

• Article in “Bitch Magazine,” April, 2012, http://bitchmagazine.org/tag/harilyn-rousso