Advisory Board

The Work RERC has a national advisory board with about a dozen members representing different areas of business, disability, and rehabilitation services and research.

Peter Blanck, Director
Law, Health Policy & Disability Center, University of Iowa College of Law

Peter Blanck is the Charles M. and Marion Kierscht Professor of Law, and Professor of Psychology, and of Public Health at the University of Iowa. Blanck is also the Director of the Law, Health Policy & Disability Center at the Iowa College of Law (http://disability.law.uiowa.edu). He received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University and his J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he served as President of the Stanford Law Review.

Blanck has written over 100 articles in law reviews and peer-reviewed journals as well as books on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and related laws, received grants to study disability law and policy, represented clients before the United States Supreme Court in ADA cases, and testified before Congress. His work has received national and international attention. Blanck's recent books in the area include: The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Emerging Workforce (AAMR, 1998); Employment, Disability, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (Northwestern U. Press 2000); and Disability Civil Rights Law and Policy (with Hill, Siegal & Waterstone) (West, 2004).

Blanck is a former member of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, and has been a Senior Fellow of the Annenberg Washington Program. He has been a Commissioner on the American Bar Association Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law, chair of the American Psychological Association's Committee on Standards in Research, and President of the American Association on Mental Retardation's Legal Process and Advocacy Division. He has been a Fellow at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, and a Mary Switzer Scholar.

Blanck's teaching focuses on disability civil rights law, social science research methods, and contract law. Prior to teaching at Iowa, Blanck practiced law at the Washington D.C. firm Covington & Burling, and served as a law clerk to the late Honorable Carl McGowan of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Frank Coombs is the Program Manager for the Assistive Work Technology (AWT) Service, which is part of the Georgia Dept of Labor, Rehabilitation Services (DRS) Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) Program. He provides leadership to the largest assistive technology service delivery program in Vocational Rehabilitation in the US. Mr. Coombs, who joined the VR program in 1999, serves as coach and mentor to the AWT staff of 29 assistive technology professionals in the statewide program while providing policy and planning for integrating AWT service delivery into the VR process. In FY 01, the AWT program conducted assistive technology service delivery to more than 1,500 VR clients and business customers. Previously, Mr. Coombs was the Director of the Rehabilitation R&D Center at the VA Medical Center in Atlanta for 8 years, and was an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Emory University. Mr. Coombs has a BS in Electrical Engineering and a Masters in Physics. He is a Registered Professional Engineer.

Valerie Fletcher is Executive Director of Adaptive Environments in Boston, an international non-profit organization founded in 1978 to address design issues that confront adults and children with disabilities and older people. That mission evolved to a focus on universal/human-centered design that anticipates diversity in ability and integrates solutions while enhancing everyone's experience. Adaptive Environments meets its mission through a wide variety of educational and consulting projects at the local, regional, national and international levels. It has been the lead sponsor of Designing the 21st Century, An International Conference on Universal Design with the next event in December of 2004 in Rio de Janeiro. Valerie currently oversees projects ranging from universal design at the urban scale, in public transit, affordable housing, offices, schools, and in print and digital graphics. She teaches an annual universal design studio at the Boston Architectural Center. She is the Principal Investigator for Adaptive Environments' NIDRR-funded project, the New England ADA and Accessible Information Technology Center. Fletcher's career has been divided between design and public mental health. She is the former Deputy Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health where she directed the reinvestment of $70M in institutional spending to new community programs through a landmark community planning process. She has a masters in ethics in public policy from Harvard University.

Dr. Vicki Hanson is the manager of the Accessibility Research group at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center in New York. Combining her background in Cognitive Psychology and Psycholinguistics, she conducted research in the areas of American Sign Language (ASL) and reading, first as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Language and Cognition at the Salk Institute and then as a Research Associate in the Reading Research Group at Haskins Laboratories. She joined the IBM Research Division in 1986. Most recently, she has been working with older adults who use computers. She is active in the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) community and currently serves as Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing (SIGACCESS). She has won several awards for her computer applications work both from IBM and from other organizations serving persons with disabilities.

Sudhakar Lahade is a Product Manager at PolyVision Corporation, a subsidiary of Steelcase. Polyvision leads the world in providing visual communication products, services, and solutions for Education, Healthcare and corporations. Mr. Lahade has a Masters degree in Design and Strategy Planning from the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology and has a particular interest in research, strategy and design.

Anil Lewis is currently employed as a Client Assistance Program (CAP) Counselor for the Law Offices of Martin and Jones. Mr. Lewis has been employed as a Job Placement Specialist at the Center for the Visually Impaired and developed a placement program as the Manager of the Disability Employment Initiative with Randstad Staffing. He is the President of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) of Georgia, is President of the Statewide Independent Living Council of Georgia, and serves as Chairman of the Board for the Georgia Disability Law and Policy Center. He obtained his BA in Computer Information Systems from Georgia State in 1993, and is currently working on his MPA in Public Policy.

Don McNeal has worked at the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center since 1968 and became Director of the Rehabilitation Engineering Program in 1980. He currently serves as Co-Director of the RERC on Technology for Children with Orthopedic Disabilities. Since 1968, he has been actively involved in rehabilitation engineering research and the development of rehabilitation equipment and assistive technology. He initiated Project Threshold, an assistive technology service delivery program that has served nearly 4000 clients since 1976. Dr. McNeal is a Past-President of RESNA, served on the RESNA Board of Directors, and chaired the Meetings and Research Committees of RESNA. He was a member of the Scientific Review and Evaluation Board of the VA Rehabilitation Research and Development Service for many years and has been a frequent reviewer for a number of biomedical/rehabilitation journals.

Dr. Mitchell currently serves as Vice President, Return to Work Programs for UnumProvident Corporation, Chattanooga, TN. In this role, he oversees the absence management development services offered to employers. Dr. Mitchell received his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University and served for seven years (1975 -1982) as an assistant and tenured associate professor in the School of Medicine, University of North Carolina, and Chapel Hill.

Dr. Mitchell served as a Clinical Assistant Professor at the Case Western University Medical School's Department of Rheumatology, as well as the Ohio State University, School of Medicine, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation from 1982 - 1992 . Dr. Mitchell is a visiting faculty member at the University of North Carolina, Duke University Occupational Health Education and Resource Center. Currently, he serves as an adjunct faculty at the University of Tennessee - Chattanooga and the University of Tennessee - College of Medicine. Dr. Mitchell serves as a consultant to Cardiff University - UnumProvident Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research - Cardiff, Wales.

From 1984 to 1997 Dr. Mitchell served as the President of the National Industrial Rehabilitation Corporation and as the Executive Director of the International Center for Industry, Labor and Rehabilitation, a private non-profit research and education group.

Jim Mueller is an industrial designer with more than 20 years of experience in assistive technology, disability management, and universal design. His clients have included Federal and State agencies, private employers, disability insurers, product manufacturers, and individuals with disabilities. In 1982, Mr. Mueller established his disability management consulting firm to assist employers in hiring and retaining workers with disabilities. He incorporated this experience into the illustrated guides to job accommodation, The Workplace Workbook and Workplace Workbook 2.0. Previously, Mr. Mueller served as Research Scientist at the George Washington University Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on job placement and accommodation of people with severe disabilities. Since 1993, he has served as a consultant to North Carolina State University's Center for Universal Design, participating in the creation of the 7 Principles of Universal Design. He also serves as a Project Director for the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Wireless Technologies in Atlanta, GA and as a disability management consultant to the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy.

Curtis Rodgers is a vocational rehabilitation specialist and the Assistant Director of the Benefits Navigator program, which is designed to assist people with disabilities (who receive either SSI or SSDI) become informed consumers when considering return to work options. He is also coordinator of Shepherd's Peer Support Program. Mr. Rodgers received the Advocate of the Year Award for 2002 from The Governor's Council On Developmental Disabilities. He is a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor (CRC) and a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC).

Paul Schwartz is a Rehabilitation Engineer and the Technology Services Coordinator for the Stout Vocational niversity of Wisconsin-Stout. He is a RESNA certified Assistive Technology Practitioner (ATP) and a Certified Professional Ergonomist (CPE). He provides complete job site accommodation, computer access and ergonomics services to industry, state agencies, educational systems, insurance companies and individuals. In addition, he has taught graduate level courses on ergonomics, assistive technology and computer applications in rehabilitation. Mr. Schwartz received a BS in Civil Engineering from Penn State University and an MS in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Ohio University. His thesis involved researching the design interface for the TouchTalker, an augmentative communication device. Mr. Schwartz is the past chair of RESNA's Special Interest Group in Job Accommodations and Employment Issues and is a current member of RESNA's Professional Standards Board. Recently, Mr. Schwartz received the 2003 Mentor Award from RESNA "for demonstrated leadership in counseling � others in the field of rehabilitation engineering and assistive technology."