Disability Rights With Andy Imparato

Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Welcome to Disability Empowerment Now, Season 3. I'm your host, Keith Murfee-DeConcini. Today I'm talking to Andy Imparato, who is the Executive Director of Disability Rights California. Andy, welcome to the show. Andy Imparato: Thanks, Keith. Great to be here with you. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Did I get everything? Andy Imparato: You mean my name and my title? Keith Murfee-DeConcini:Yes. Andy Imparato: Yes, Andy Imparato, Executive Director, Disability Rights California. Great to be here. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Thank you. We have known each other for a few decades, it feels like a dozen years. We first met when I was a fellow at Arizona LEND and you were then the executive director of AUCD? And how long were you with AUCD? Andy Imparato: So I started at AUCD in the fall of 2013, and I left at the end of 2020. So I was there about six and a half years and it was a great experience. You know, I really enjoyed getting to know people in the network like you, who were emerging leaders and trying to do good things in the world with and for people with disabilities. I feel like during the time that I was there the organization kind of connected in a deeper way with the disability movement. It was more intentional about identifying and elevating leaders with disabilities and leaders from diverse racial and ethnic groups. So I feel good about kind of the impact that we had while I was there. And I'm hopeful that that's continuing under John's leadership since I left. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Surely it was a transition from AUCD to moving across the country to be the executive director of Disability Rights California. Was it a hard transition? Andy Imparato: Yeah, it's an interesting I mean, so I moved in January of 2020. I grew up in Southern California. So, in some ways, this is coming home for me, but it has been 30 years since I've lived in the state. I never lived in Sacramento, which is where I am, and then I started the job on February 3rd, and we closed all of our offices on March 3rd. So, and that's 26 offices. This is a lot bigger than AUCD in terms of the actual staff. So we have 327 staff, 100 lawyers. So, one of the challenges in the transition for me was just getting to know my staff in a world where we couldn't really spend time together in person and all of our lives were being disrupted and in kind of unpredictable ways by the pandemic. So with that as an understanding, I think the transition ultimately was good for me and hopefully for the organization. I came in after an executive director who'd been in my role for 26 years and had worked for the organization for 40. So big shoes to fill and I'm a very different style of leader. She was kind of a lawyer's lawyer. She was very hands on and very connected to every kind of aspect of the organization. I tend to be more external facing and trust the people under me that are going to be leaders in their own right and do their own thing. So it's been an adjustment. But I think overall the organization has made it through the pandemic in good shape. We continue to grow and I feel like the disability community in California feels more connected to us and our leadership. Especially my director of public policy, Eric Harris, who's a former intern and kind of has strong ties to the disability community is also a former wheelchair basketball player. He went to the University of Arizona and played wheelchair basketball there. So you have Arizona in common, and Eric has been a great partner for me. We're both trying to build deeper relationships with the California Congressional Delegation so that we can help to shape federal policy more for people with disabilities. And then we're also trying to build relationships in Sacramento with our state legislature. The last two years, there's been a bit of a challenge, Keith, just because our governor is very focused on the house population here and the stuff I think it's kind of similar to what your mirror is doing in New York City, but the stuff that our governor is doing to try to address the unhoused population, is being done without really engaging the population or engaging people that have lived experience, you know, having been housed or having mental health disabilities. So, he's increased the state's ability to take away people's rights to force them to take medication to put them in locked settings and he's done that kind of over the objections of most of the advocates in the state who advocate on behalf of unhoused people and people with disabilities. So for me, you know, after 26 years in Washington, it's frustrating having a progressive Democrat governor who self identifies as having a disability. He has dyslexia, and he wrote a book about it. But he's just not listening to the disability community on what is one of the most important issues of our time, so that is very frustrating to me. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Yes, yes, it is. Since we once saw each other, I joined a number of boards, including the Arizona Center for Disability Law, which, by the time this episode airs, will be Disability Rights Arizona. So, there's another thing we share in common. Andy Imparato: So Keith, can I ask, are you now living in Arizona, or are you still in New York? Keith Murfee-DeConcini: I’m right now in Arizona. I go back and forth just to build a podcast base over there. And then if I do move, I will leave Disability Rights Arizona, but nothing has been determined. I just found that to be very interesting that we keep connecting in professional ways. I know you quite well, but tell me more about your history. What got you involved with disability rights? And how did the lawyer bug bite you? Andy Imparato: Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting. My career has not been kind of linear. It's been kind of improvisational in some ways. So I studied Italian Renaissance culture in college and thought about getting a PhD in art history. And I spent a summer in Rome and realized that I get more energy from people than I do from books. So I was afraid that the PhD was going to involve too many books. So I decided to go to law school in part because I couldn't figure out what else to do. And when I started law school at Stanford, Like, within a couple weeks of starting, I kind of got inspired by my classmates. That particular class had a number of people that wanted to do public service and public interest work, and they really made me feel like they were going to change the world. And I started to believe that. There was a way to use the legal training and the network that I was exposed to in law school to really try to change power structures so that people that didn't have easy access to lawyers or to government officials would have more power and more agency and I ended up working for Cambridge and Somerville legal services the summer after I graduated law school and they put me in SSI advocacy and that was kind of my introduction to disability. I had my first serious episode of depression during my last semester of law school, and after I worked in the disability space for about a year, I started being open about, ultimately I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I started being open about my disability, and I got a lot of support, I was in Boston at the time, I got a lot of support from the cross disability community in Boston as a young lawyer with a mental health disability to be out and open and to be disabled. They saw me as a strong leader that they could trust and I ended up working with them on issues that were front and center for the disability community in Massachusetts at the time, it involved a state Medicaid director that was trying to cut back on services, long term services and supports. But I found I like doing policy work the most. And so when my fellowship ended, I applied for a job with Senator Harkin when he was chairing the Senate subcommittee on disability policy and got the job and that started my career in D. C. So, I kind of see myself as a soldier in a movement Keith. I don't really feel like my job has changed much since I started working in this field. If I’m working in the government, or I'm working outside the government, I'm trying to connect with people that can help move a policy agenda. And, improved quality of life for people with all types of disabilities, even though I have a mental health disability, my whole career, I've been more across disability. I've never focused just on mental health. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Yeah. How is the job you're currently in different from AUCD? Because, I've gotta tell you, to hear that you were only the executive director for AUCD for six years is mind boggling to me because observing you in that role, it seemed like you had always been there, that you knew everyone by name, even though you probably didn't. And it seemed like, again, this is an assumption, it seemed like your dream job. And so how are they different again? And, I mean, pandemic aside that would throw, that did throw everyone off, rightfully so. Do you miss the job or do you feel comfortable because what you just said about you doesn't feel like your job or your trajectory has changed that much? Speak more on that. Andy Imparato: Yeah. Well thanks for that question. I mean, I was very grateful for the time I spent at AUCD. You know, that was my second CEO job before. I had been the head of AAPD, the American Association of People with Disabilities for 11 years. So I feel like at AUCD was a better leader than I was at AAPD because I made a lot of mistakes in that role that I learned from and tried not to make them in the same way at AUCD. And then I learned things over the six years at AUCD that I've tried to apply at Disability Rights California. I feel like I'm growing as a leader and I tried, sometimes moving around. Is helpful to kind of continue your growth trajectory, both from a career standpoint and a personal standpoint. My biggest inspiration as a leader was Justin Dart. Keith, I don't know if you ever had a chance to meet Justin? Keith Murfee-DeConcini: No that was unfortunately way before my time. Andy Imparato: Yeah, so Justin, you know, when I first came to DC in ‘93, he was like, chairing the president's committee on employment of people with disabilities. And he was a very important, very visible. leader with a disability in DC. And Justin, I think the first time I met him was at a White House event when I was working for Senator Harkin. I remember him pulling over and Bobby Silverstein, who was my boss, who was Senator Harkin's staff director, he introduced me to Justin and he kind of wheeled in close to me and looked me in the eye and he kind of had a twinkle in his eye and he said, you're in a good place. And Justin, the whole, so he died in 2003, so I knew him for about 10 years, but the whole time that I knew Justin, it didn't matter what my job was, you know, I went to EEOC for a while, I went to the National Council on Disability, and then I went to AAPD, but Justin always made me feel important, he always made me feel valued, he always made me feel that my disability identity was significant. He talked to me a lot about his depression, which was part of his disability. His most visible disability was his wheelchair. It was a polio survivor, but he also was somebody who experienced depression and talked about it and really made a point of connecting with leaders in the mental health, you know, consumer survivor movement, what we called ourselves at that time. So I think, you know, a narrative for me has been a PD was about helping the organization be sustainable. It was an idea when I got there and I helped to make it sustainable over 11 years. And I'm very proud of Maria Town and the work she's doing to keep that organization growing and thriving. AUCD was about taking the 600 million dollar network and bringing it closer to the disability movement and the civil rights and social justice movements. And I, you know, I could have stayed there longer, but I feel like, you know, I was there long enough to have an impact. And it felt like a good place for me at that point in my life. One of the things that was healthy about AUCD compared to AAPD, is I didn't feel any pressure when I was at AUCD to raise a lot of money. You know, we did build some new partnerships. We had some new funding streams. We had core funding that was pretty stable. I never had that at AUCD. I always had to go out and raise the money. And that was not good for my mental health. I, you know, I found myself competing with people I love for money and that just didn't feel healthy to me. So part of the reason I went to work for Senator Harkin again in 2010, was to get away from that rat race and my three and a half years with Harkin the second time, it was almost like a sabbatical. I didn't feel like I was competing with anyone. I had a wonderful boss who wanted to do great things. We had 13 hearings that were all bipartisan. We picked all the witnesses together with our Republican ranking members. So that was a fun kind of interlude for me. And then when Harkin announced he was retiring, I had to figure out something. I threw my hat in the ring at AUCD. I didn't expect to get it because the person who had the job before me was a PhD and had a background in academia, and I didn't think they would hire a bipolar lawyer for that role, but when they did, I, you know, I felt very moved emotionally when they told me they were hiring because it just, I just took it as a validation that a bunch of academics and MDs saw value in what I've done with my career and what I could do with AUCD. And then with Disability Rights California, it's really coming home. You know, I've felt like a fish out of water on the East Coast, you know, my whole 30 years on the East Coast. I'm a West Coast person. My energy is West Coast energy. I feel like I breathe better on the West Coast. And, I felt like at this stage in my career, it would be good to come home and really try to help our state be the best state in the country and a force for good in the world for people with disabilities. And I, you know, a big motivator for me was my two children. Both my sons were in California when my wife and I moved out here in 2020. One of them is now back on the East Coast in Philadelphia, but the other one is a first year law student at UCLA. So, you know, I would say the big difference between AUCD and Disability Rights California is just size. I have a lot more staff. I have a lot more layers between me and other folks. I have, I also have a lot more influence over who gets on my board. At AUCD, as you, as you may remember, we elected our board from the membership. So I didn't, I mean, I could encourage people to run for the board, but it was up to the membership who got elected to the board at Disability Rights California, our board, you know, votes for the new board members, similar to what we had at AAPD. So I feel like in that way, I can shape my destiny a little bit more. I can find good people, support, recruit them to apply and hopefully help them get through the process and I really do feel like we have an extraordinary board. It's very cross disability. It's very diverse. I feel like maybe one of the biggest differences, Keith, I feel like my disability identity and my lived experience with my disability is more important to my board at Disability Rights California than it was at AUCD. I think the board at AUCD appreciated my disability lived experience and identity. But I think they were more focused on my ability to make stuff happen politically for the network, or, you know, my knowledge of Washington, my relationships, that sometimes I felt like my lived experience just wasn't as important to them. And part of that is also, as much as I tried to push AUCD to be a cross disability organization, its kind of center of gravity was intellectual and developmental disabilities. And I think sometimes when people have a different kind of disability, The people who are focused on the IDD community don't always see that lived experience as being as important or significant. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: I remember meeting Senator Hawkin, at one of the policy seminars and that was one of the top moments of my life. In fact, he would be a fantastic interview to conduct. And we'll talk about that off camera. But getting back to you, you mentioned your bipolar, and getting personal for a second, what was it like finding that out, and what was the process of, from finding out to embracing your disability identity, because when you told me that, I was like, huh, that's interesting, but because I had never really imagined that. But one of the things that I've always admired about you is your, for lack of a better term, rock solid disability identity. And so that journey must have been incredible. Andy Imparato: I mean for me it really happened in Boston. You know, my wife was getting a PhD. I got married the summer after my second year of law school. And my wife was getting a PhD at Boston University. So we moved to Boston. I did my last year of law school in Boston and I was a visiting student at Harvard and was enjoying my classes. I had great professors, great classes, and talked a lot in class. And then very quickly I went from kind of being really happy to having no energy, no confidence, no self esteem. And it just happened very quickly and it was scary. You know, I walked around Boston hoping to be hit by a car or something just to put me out of my misery, and it was hard for me to think about being a lawyer. You know, I didn't feel like I had any value, any capacity to do that. I thought about working for the food co-op. I thought, you know, maybe I could put labels on cans and stuff, but I just, my expectations for myself went down dramatically. My wife, you know, at that point I was on a conveyor belt. It was my last semester of law school. My wife helped me stay on the conveyor belt. I got through my classes and ended up doing the summer job. The depression lifted and then eventually I settled into a pattern where I would get depressed, you know, mostly in the wintertime. And then I would have kind of too much energy and a lot of self confidence in the summertime, you know, and it, you know, I learned how to navigate it, but I think what really helped me around the disability identity was working at the Disability Law Center in Boston next to lawyers like Debbie Pilch who had dyslexia and was very open about it and was a proud lawyer with a disability, or Linda Wong who had spina bifida. Like the two of them, I think really encouraged me to lean into my disability identity. And then I found as I did that my relationship with the disability leaders in Massachusetts improved and they started to work with me in a different way as a peer, not just as their lawyer, and that felt healthy to me. So, you know, it wasn't a linear process. You know, it probably took me a good 18 months from when I first experienced depression to when I started to really want to have a disability identity as a part of my professional identity. But I'm just really grateful that it happened early in my career, because one of the things that it did for me is it enabled me to connect with people like Justin Dart in a different way. Early in my career and those folks really helped to shape me as a leader so I feel like God gave me this thing to navigate and gave me something to do with it. And I don't, it's probably my Catholic upbringing. I don't feel like anything happens by accident, but I just feel lucky all these things kind of came together in that way for me in Boston that set me on a solid foundation when I came to Washington in the early 90s. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Thank you for that. Yeah, I didn't expect that journey, which is why I didn't ask about it when we first met. I had seen where you got to through that journey. And so we all go through a similar journey. I tried to devocalize myself or wanted to I should say my voice didn't come in until age seven and onward and upward. But was there a time in your life where you weren't sure if you wanted to associate with others like yourself? Andy Imparato: You know, it's interesting, Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Because why I asked that is that I think a lot of advocates start at that point. And it's rarely talked about and that's why I bring it up. I mean, camp is great. Not everyone gets to go to camp. And, but, like, for me, I'm constantly figuring myself out my own disabilities. And so it took a long while for me to get to that point of yeah, I want to associate with other disabled people and I'm not ashamed that it took me that time. But sorry I interrupted you. Andy Imparato: No, I think it's a good question. You know, I think there are a lot of people who don't want to get pigeonholed as just being a disabled person, they don't want their lives to be unnecessarily circumscribed by their lived experience with their disability. In part, I think, because I've always done cross disability work I've been less worried about that. I feel like the disability world is huge and it touches every fabric of society, every, every element of public policy has a disability piece to it. And no individual will ever know everything there is to know about disability. It's just too big of a category. So I've never felt that the disability category was going to limit me in any way. I feel like the disability category brings me into climate change. It brings me into, you know, religion. And it brings me into economic policy, education policy, transportation, healthcare, bioethics. I mean, you name the topic, there's a pretty strong disability thread, or there should be. So I've never felt limited by my focus on disability. And I have felt that it's given me a wonderful, global, professional home. Everywhere I go in the world, I find disability advocates literally everywhere and we have a way of finding each other and connecting with each other and scheming with each other and conspiring with each other. And I just think that's a beautiful thing, and I think if you look at the history of the world, and you take the period of my life, 1965 until 2023 right now, and you look at the change that's happened in the 58 years that I've been on the planet, I just feel so lucky to have lived at a time when the world was really shifting and how it thinks about it, how it frames disability issues, thinks about what's possible for disabled people. Is it shifting fast enough? No. Is it shifting in a way where everybody is benefiting from the change the way that they should? No. But is it exciting to be alive at a time when all this change is happening? Yeah, it's been really exciting for me. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: So, you were never afraid of being pigeonholed in the community or in the work you would eventually pursue? Andy Imparato: I think that's right. I like to bring a disability lens to different topics. The disability lens itself doesn't feel limiting to me. I will say that I enjoy being somebody with that expertise and that lens working with people that are not from the disability community. I find I can add more value if the disabled person is in a group that's thinking about things that are bigger than disability. If everybody in the group is focused on disability, sometimes I feel like my ability to add value is not as strong. So, I really enjoyed serving on the health equity task force that President Biden created, COVID 19 health equity task force in 2000. After he was elected, he created it in 2021, but I was like the disabled person there. And then there were people that were focused on prisoners and people that were focused on immigrants and rural hospitals and, you know, first responders. And, you know, so it was. That felt good to me to bring kind of all these years of connections to the disability community into that topic at a time where we were trying to help the White House make good decisions to keep people alive and keep people safe during the pandemic. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: So what are your primary goals for Disability Rights California. Andy Imparato: Yeah, I mean, so the way I like to articulate my primary goal is I want to help California be the best state in the country for disabled people and when I say the best state in the country, I mean. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: That’s not lovely at all. Andy Imparato: But, yeah, when I say the best state of the country, I mean, you know, the best education system, you know, K-12 and higher education, the best employment outcomes, the best homeownership outcomes, the best, you know, you name the outcome. I want people with disabilities to have a really good quality of life. And I want us to help our state have a serious conversation about our core values, because right now we have some of the wealthiest people in the world living in our state, and they're living within blocks of people who have nothing and are literally living on the sidewalk or living on the streets. And we haven't really come to grips with that from a moral standpoint, like, why is it okay? For somebody to have more money than they could ever hope to spend, and for somebody to have nothing, and we don't really have a way to connect the dots where the people who have nothing end up having you know, a safe place to live and an income stream where they can have a decent quality of life as a human being. So, yeah, in some ways, I feel like California is in this weird post apocalyptic state where we've just, we've allowed greed to run amok for decades, and it's produced this very visible problem of homelessness, which keeps growing. Interestingly, the fastest growing homeless population is people over 50. So these are people that are basically being priced out of the housing market and have nowhere to live. And so I feel like a big part of my job at Disability Rights California is to hold up a mirror to the state and say, this is the reality of our state right now for disabled people, and we can do better. And in order to do better, we need to take this seriously and start working with the disability community to do better. And right now I feel like our state is in denial. We think we're progressive, we call ourselves a nation state, we're the fifth largest economy in the world, we brag about all the ways that we're better than everyone, but when it comes to how we treat folks with disabilities and other marginalized populations, we have nothing to brag about. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: What got you into law? Andy Imparato: I told you, I kind of did it by accident. I couldn't really figure out what to do so I figured having a law degree couldn't hurt me. Now that I've, you know, gone to law school, I realize it can hurt you because it's expensive and you end up having a lot of debt and sometimes it can change the way you think about things in a way that is more narrow. I try to be imaginative, but sometimes lawyers can be lacking in imagination. I think it's part of the legal training. It can be a little rigid. I know my writing got worse when I was in law school because lawyers tend to prioritize precision in writing and sometimes precision is not elegant. I tend to feel like poetry is more powerful than lawyer writing and I feel like I lost some of my ability to write in a more lyrical, poetic way. But, I don't regret going to law school. As I said, I got inspired to do public service, public interest work. I loved my classmates. It got me back to California, you know, after spending four years in Connecticut, I was an undergrad. So it also reconnected me with California in a way that felt really healthy at the time. So it was I don't know. I feel like, again, probably God was pushing me in this direction without me realizing it. I don't come from a family of lawyers it was definitely an out of the box thing for my family. My father did not graduate from college and my mother's a journalist. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: How often do you communicate with your sister agencies around the country? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a disability rights organization in every state in this country. That has to be a lot of back and forth communication going on constantly to say nothing of AUCD and UCEDD and the LEND programs. But, and how are the communication styles different? Andy Imparato: Yeah so we’re part of the National Disability Rights Network, or NDRM, which is similar to AUCD. It was created, you know, by our network to kind of provide support to our network and represent our network in Washington. There are 57 protection advocacy agencies. So there's one in every state, but also every territory. And in that way, it's similar to the university centers for excellence. And we're all the CEOs are all on a list, so I get multiple emails a day from other CEOs that are throwing out questions to the network. There's a lot of pure support across the network. We're all trying to figure out stuff together, whether it's, you know, how to do work from home in a post COVID universe, or how to respond to a particular political problem, or, you know, what kind of retirement benefits we have. And we give each other pure support on just about any topic and then we elect a board of directors. The head of the Arizona PNA was the head of the board up until recently. So he was the head of the board when they recruited a new executive director. Marlena started just the last a little over a year ago, and she, like me, she came in after somebody had been in the role forever. Kurt Decker, who was the head of our network had been there from the beginning, like, for decades. So we're going through a transition from a leadership standpoint, but I think it's similar to the AUCD network. You got some longtime directors who've known each other for years. You've got a bunch of young bucks or newer directors and we're all kind of figuring it out together, what is a new normal is post pandemic but it's been, I've enjoyed connecting with the other directors and there are a number of directors that have policy backgrounds. So I appreciate being able to connect with directors around policy issues as well. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Are you still in contact with AUCD and your colleagues there? Andy Imparato: Yeah, so John Tschida, who's the executive director, was my kind of associate executive director, so I recruited John to when I was down, we worked together for several years before I left. So, yeah, John and I are still in contact with each other. I went to the AUCD conference last year and spoke at it with the chair of the health equity task force that I served on and part of it is because the theme of the conference that year was health equity. So I felt like it was a good opportunity to go and reconnect with people. And it was great to see a lot of people. I didn't go this year in part, just because the timing didn't work out for me, but I do hope to go to the conference next year, which will be in December. They always do it in December, the year of a presidential election cycle. So being in Washington in December after the election could be really interesting either way, whether Biden gets reelected or not, it's an interesting time to be in Washington. So yeah, I, and then in terms of the center directors in California, we talk pretty regularly and then I'm still, still in touch with a lot of other former AUCD colleagues. A lot of it's from me on social media. I see them on Facebook and other platforms pretty regularly. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Not to dismiss the lovely goal you had of turning California into the best state for people with disabilities. In the next five to ten years, or there smaller goals, but that are just as critical. Andy Imparato: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I, you know, the way I've been thinking about this is we have a 46 million budget right now. In 2028, we will be at our 50th anniversary. So in the next four years, our budget is likely to go over 50 million. What I like to think about is if I had another 50 million, so if the budget were to double and the other 50 million was unrestricted, how would I spend that money? And the kinds of things that I would spend the money on are storytellers, investigative journalists, social workers, community organizers. I would want to fill in around the lawyers and the legal services so that we are engaging with the public and in a more robust way, and we're having a bigger conversation with the public about what's working and not working for people with disabilities in California. And hopefully that would help to lay the foundation for more rapid progress. I think like a lot of legal services programs, we tend to prioritize the skills of a lawyer and the kinds of things that only lawyers can do like litigation that tends to get prioritized over other strategies. And I want to have more tools, more skills in our workforce so that we can apply multiple strategies to try to address a problem that is playing out for children or adults with disabilities in California. So we've started that, since I've been here, we hired some social workers for the first time. We've hired some community organizers for the first time, but I'd like for us to have more funding streams from the private sector. The vast majority of our funding comes from the federal government, state government and the state bar and the state bar money kind of originates with the state government. So I'd like to have more funding streams from foundations, corporations, private individuals, and build deeper relationships in places like Silicon Valley and Hollywood. I feel like in some ways, and this is part of the attraction of moving back to California, the decisions that get made in Silicon Valley have more impact on the day to day lives of disabled people across the world than decisions getting made in Washington, D. C. If you just think about how their technology is part of everybody's day to day lives. So if we can have more influence on that and infiltrate Silicon Valley so there's more people with all kinds of disabilities and leadership roles, that feels exciting to me. Same thing with Hollywood, we have better storytelling coming out of Hollywood, it's going to rapidly change, more rapidly change the way people think about what's possible for people with disabilities and some of the nuances associated with our lived experience. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Well, so, I mean, thanks for a very robust answer, the wow was your assertion, and I don't doubt it at all that more policy and technology that comes out of Silicon Valley affects people with disabilities across the country than decisions made in war. Again, I don't doubt that at all, but just to hear that and soak it in was, I mean, I had never really thought of it like that, and so thank you for blowing my mind. The last question is, if there are any aspiring advocates who are just starting out and wanting to make self advocacy their professional calling, what are some action steps that you would impart to them? Andy Imparato: Well, I'll go back to your question about whether I find the disability category to be somehow limiting to me. I do find the term self-advocacy to be limiting. I'm sure, Keith, you've talked about this with Liz Weintraub who feels pretty strongly about this. The fact that you have lived experience with a disability and you're an advocate does not necessarily mean that you're a self-advocate, like, from my perspective, it means that you are a disability advocate. You're a disability policy professional but I'm worried that the word self advocate ends up being self limiting. Most of the people who carry that label are not just advocating for themselves, pretty much everybody I know who carries that label is not just advocating for themselves, they're using their lived experience to push for change. So what I would say to folks who are trying to leverage their lived experience to drive change is think about the skills that you want to develop, like if you want to be able to go on television and deliver a good message on television. Who do you know that has those skills that you can cultivate as a mentor? So who has mastery in an area that you want to learn mastery that you could, you know, basically connect yourself to? If you want to understand the legislative process, who do you know that has skills in that area that you can attach yourself to? If you want to be a good fundraiser, who do you know that has skills in that area that you can attach yourself to? If you want to be a good supervisor, if you want to be a good people manager. Who do you know that has skills? And just try to attach yourself to people that have mastery so that you can learn this stuff faster. The way that I learned quickly how to do disability policy was by working for Bobby Silverstein, who was incredibly good at the legislative process. So I feel like I learned more in a year and a half working for Bobby than I would have learned in 10 years, you know, working in a different environment. So I say always be on the lookout for people with mastery in areas that you think you want to develop mastery. And also just listen to yourself in terms of what energizes you. So many people have jobs where they don't really feel energized by their jobs. And I think one of the most important things we can do from a career standpoint is spend as much time as possible on things that energize us. And as little as little time as possible and things that suck the energy out of us, if you go home at night after going to work. And you have more energy when you go home than when you have when you got to work, then you're in the right job. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Very well said, last question, and thank you so much for taking the time out of a, I'm sure, very busy day. But I hope you come back at some point. I would like to think that this podcast is listened to by people with disabilities and by people who have yet to discover their own disabilities. It would be naive to think that both groups would take away similar things in an episode. So as my guest, what do you hope that advocates with disabilities learn from this episode and what do you hope that people who have yet to discover their disabilities take away from this episode? Andy Imparato: So I think for advocates with disabilities, I want them to be excited that they're part of a global movement that is experiencing rapid change in lots of different ways, and that they have allies everywhere in the world, and the field of disability is not narrow in any way. It's a broad, wide open field. And there's benefits to getting to know the whole community and not just you're part of the community. For folks that are not part of our community or don't have a strong disability identity, I would say, view the disability community as a force for good in the world as a unifier as a force that can bring people together and become increasingly divided. Ideological world is divided in lots of ways, religion, ideology you know, you name it class and understand that you can move in and out of our community over the course of your life. And the concept of disability is a big, broad concept and laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act protect lots and lots of people who don't have strong disability identities, but they still have access to those civil rights protections when they need them. And that's a good thing. So, yeah, I mean, basically for both audiences, the disability rights movement is a force for good in the world, and we should all be grateful for this movement. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Andy I want to thank you, for years of friendship and for coming on this episode and sharing so much wisdom with me and the listener. And I do hope that you will come back again, because you are a force to be reckoned with and somehow I deeply admire. You are on the right path through all of the aspects of your life. You just keep going and it's really encouraging that there are advocates out there like you. Andy Imparato: Well, thank you, Keith. I promise I'm happy to come back and I appreciate your leadership. Thank you for giving me this platform and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Keith Murfee-DeConcini: Thank you very much. Happy holidays. Andy Imparato: You too. Bye bye. Keith: You have been listening to Disability Empowerment Now. I would like to thank my guest, You, our listener and the Disability Empowerment Team that made this episode possible. More information about the podcast can be found at DisabilityEmpowermentNow.com or on social media @disabilityempowermentnow. The podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts or on the official website. Don’t forget to rate, comment, and share the podcast! This episode of Disability Empowerment Now is copyrighted 2023.