EDI Voices

EDI Voices

Welcome to EDI Voices! In this forum, we center the diverse voices and experiences of people throughout our UCLA community and highlight important contributions to equity, diversity and inclusion.

For this issue of EDI Voices, members of UCLA’s University Committee on Disability (UCOD) offered insights on what EDI means to them and how it factors into their work with UCOD.

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Equity, diversity, and inclusion directly informs my work in UCOD. One of the exciting things about the UCLA community is that the disability community is part of the EDI community. One of the first graduate students who joined my lab at the beginning of my career is a brilliant scientist and also has a disability. He inspired me to dedicate myself to address issues of disabilities and advocate for accommodations for members of the community who need it. Since that time, I have been inspired by many of my UCOD colleagues and their dedication to advocacy for individuals with disability and their passion for making the world a better place.

Eleazar Eskin

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Equity, diversity and inclusion are the main principles at the core of our adaptive sports and recreation program. For many students with disabilities, adaptive programs are one of the few environments on campus where they feel included and able to fully participate. Our programs promote inclusion by encouraging non-disabled students, friends, and family members to participate alongside their disabled peers. Creating a safe space for students with disabilities to engage in recreation, sport, competition, and fitness fills me with hope and purpose knowing that what I’m doing is making a difference in these students’ lives. We have built a tight knit community and family which I hope will continue, leading to self-confidence, self-advocacy, self-care, and lifelong friendships. I am passionate about my work with UCOD because I get to see firsthand the impact we are making. Often times these are things that have impacted me in my personal life. I feel like my personal experience living with a disability helps me make informed decisions, listen with a mindful ear, and bring concerns to UCOD.

Michael Garafola

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EDI plays a huge role in every aspect of my life. As a multiracial, disabled woman working in STEM, my intersectionality has always been central to how I conduct myself. As I got older, I began to realize how much I longed for icons to look up to and admire that shared my intersectionality, or at least a subset of it. After much hoping, I had the epiphany of “why not me?” Instead of waiting around for the icons I longed for, I realized my time was better spent attempting to become the icon I wished to see. I love EDI’s mission and theme because its central focus will always be admitting ignorance and I find a fundamental beauty in it. No matter your experience or how intersectional your identities are, embracing EDI is about constantly acknowledging that our ranges of existence are so vast that we are always exposed to something new, and that our jobs are simply to embrace constantly learning about and empowering everyone’s unique humanity.

Carolanne Link

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Equity, diversity and inclusion inform my work in UCOD by bringing the goals of disability access to the forefront of the conversation. Thinking through a lens of equity when approaching issues of access allows us to view disability from an intersectional lens. For instance, me being a physically disabled individual is a different experience than a neurodiverse individual. Disability intersects so many varying identities and because of this, we must think of access through levels of gender, sexuality, race, and status rather than solely through the outlook of “disability”. When it comes to UCOD, I value the myriad of experiences from the committee as not one of us has the same perspective on disability; and listening to those perspectives is the path towards creating the most equitable environment at UCLA for the disabled population.

Quinn O’Connor