Networking Reception

Welcome & Event Overview

Keynote – Jennifer Mathis

Award Presentation

Acceptance Remarks

Honoree Toast

Closing Remarks

Mix & Mingle

Michael J. Brogioli serves as the Executive Director of TASH. Michael joined TASH in October 2020 and brings over twenty five years of senior management experience in the nonprofit sector including past leadership positions as executive director of the Autism Coalition for Research and Education, the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities (NACDD) and RESNA. Brogioli also has experience working on Capitol Hill where he served as a Jacob Javits Fellow and legislative assistant on health care issues to U.S. Senator Tom Daschle. Prior to joining TASH, Michael worked on an interim basis as a Senior Advisor to Eurasia Programs for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, where he advised programs involving civil society organizations including those that advocate for people with disabilities. Brogioli earned a Master of Public Policy from Duke University and a BA in Government and International Relations from the University of Notre Dame. He resides in Mount Rainier, Maryland.

Judith A. Gran, Esq. practiced law at the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia from 1984 to 2009. She served as Director of Disability Projects from 1998 to 2009. She has conducted class action litigation to obtain community services for institutionalized persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Montana, California, Illinois and Tennessee. Her work as counsel for the Arc of Pennsylvania and the plaintiff class during the implementation phase of the consent decree in Halderman v. Pennhurst from 1986 through 1998 led to significant improvements in community service systems in Philadelphia and other counties. Ms. Gran represents special education students in administrative and judicial proceedings in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and other states, including the class action suit Gaskin v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a case brought to enforce the least restrictive environment mandate of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that is now in the implementation phase. She is a currently a partner at Reisman Gran & Zuba LLP.

Sarah Lorr is the associate professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. Her research focuses on disability and family law, specifically studying the role of disability in the family regulation system, the right to marry, the imposition of guardianship, and broader conceptions of the American Family. She teaches courses in disability law, family law, and torts.
Professor Lorr’s recent scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the California Law Review, the Oklahoma Law Review, and the Columbia Journal of Race & the Law. For her article Disabling Families, Lorr received honorable mention in the Association of American Law Schools 2024 Scholarly Papers Competition. Professor Lorr is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Family Justice Law Center and the chair of the AALS Section on Disability Law.
Prior to joining Maryland Carey Law, Professor Lorr clerked for Judge Joan N. Ericksen, U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, and for Judge Boyce F. Martin III, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Subsequently, she was a supervising attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services Family Defense Practice in Brooklyn, N.Y., providing free legal representation to parents at risk of losing their children to foster care. In that capacity, she also represented parents in a wide range of matters related to family law, including termination of parental rights, custody, and family offense proceedings. She has also represented adults seeking to avoid the imposition or continuation of guardianships. Professor Lorr previously taught at Brooklyn Law School where she co-directed the Disability and Civil Rights Clinic and taught doctrinal law.

Leslie Seid Margolis is DRM’s Managing Attorney, has joined the ranks of Maryland legislators, teachers, and advocates demanding a stronger response to COVID-19 from Maryland State Superintendent Karen Salmon. A Baltimore Sun article reported on July 29 that the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) has failed to provide a concrete plan for supporting schools this fall, instead only offering noncommittal suggestions to local school districts. As Margolis says in the article, suggestions are not enough. Delegate Brooke Lierman, a representative of Baltimore City and an attorney at Brown, Goldstein and Levy, LLP, sums up the situation: Superintendent Salmon “claims to be leading by giving options,” Lierman says in the article, “but really there is just no plan; she belittles the needs that parents have for child care; and she communicates as little information as possible.”
As part of the Maryland Education Coalition, DRM has helped draft several letters voicing these concerns to the Superintendent. DRM is also an appointed member organization of the MSDE’s external stakeholder committee, but the MSDE has provided hardly any information to its stakeholders regarding statewide school plans, and the minimal information provided is often only made accessible at the last minute — too late for meaningful input from stakeholders. DRM continues to urge Salmon and the MSDE to work with its stakeholders to develop a plan that supports students who have difficulty learning online, including students with disabilities, young children, and homeless students.

Melanie Reeves Miller is a seasoned professional with over three decades of experience in disabilities and human services. She is widely recognized for her expertise in advancing systems that support individuals with disabilities, particularly through her leadership in the implementation and oversight of federal class action litigation. Her work has been instrumental in addressing unnecessary institutionalization and promoting the rights of individuals with disabilities to transition from institutional and congregate long-term care settings into integrated community-based environments.

Steven Schwartz is currently the Special Counsel for the Center for Public Representation, after founding the Center in 1976 and then serving as its Executive Director for 38 years. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1971, he represented thousands of people with disabilities over the past fifty years. He has testified before Congress on numerous occasions, successfully resolved a number of damage cases for institutionalized individuals with disabilities, and litigated dozens of class action cases that challenge the unnecessary segregation of people with disabilities in psychiatric hospitals, developmental disability institutions, nursing facilities, and juvenile justice settings. He has provided training and technical assistance to disability rights programs in more than 40 states, authored a number of law review articles, and served on the faculty of the Harvard and Western New England Law Schools.

Hezzy Smith, Esq. is a trilingual attorney, a proud sibling, and Director of Advocacy Initiatives. He’s responsible for much of HPOD’s self-advocacy programming. He has worked closely with self-advocacy and disabled peoples’ organizations both in the United States and abroad to advocate, research, and produce awareness-raising materials. His Spanish, English, and Bangla language materials have shaped disability rights strategic litigation and important decisions by national and regional courts, and his disability rights scholarship has appeared in collections published by Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press, as well as both U.S. and international law reviews.

Kimberly Tissot is a nationally recognized disability first and largest disability-led Center for Independent Living. As a disabled woman and cancer survivor, Kimberly brings lived experience to her work- fueling her relentless advocacy to ensure people with disabilities are not just included, but leading the decisions that impact their lives.
With more than two decades of leadership, Kimberly has driven major policy and cultural shifts across South Carolina. She co-authored and helped pass the South Carolina Persons with Disabilities Right to Parent Act, led efforts to eliminate subminimum wage for disabled workers, and continues to push for full implementation of Employment First policies statewide. Her work spans healthcare, education, employment, transportation, and housing — recognizing that true independence requires all systems to work together.
Kimberly is also a fierce defender of disability civil rights at both the state and national level. Most notably, her advocacy directly influenced the South Carolina Attorney General’s decision to withdraw the state from the Section 504 lawsuit, protecting critical federal disability protections for millions of Americans. She is known for holding systems accountable while building solutions that center disabled voices.
Beyond policy, Kimberly leads innovative programs serving thousands of South Carolinians each year, including youth transition, employment initiatives, and disaster preparedness efforts for people with disabilities. She is a sought-after speaker, trainer, and thought leader, known for her bold, unapologetic approach to advancing equity and dismantling outdated systems.
Kimberly’s work is grounded in one core belief: nothing about us, without us. And she is proving every day what happens when disabled people lead.

Lindsey Weinstock is a partner at Brown, Goldstein & Levy LLP in Baltimore, where she litigates civil rights cases on behalf of individuals and organizations in state and federal courts. For more than a decade, until May of 2025, Lindsey had the honor of serving as a Trial Attorney in the Disability Rights Section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. There, she worked to enforce the integration mandate of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act across the country by conducting investigations, complex civil litigation, settlement negotiations, and monitoring implementation of remedial orders, consent decrees, and settlement agreements. She also provided legal and policy counsel to and collaborated with agencies across the federal government regarding legislative, regulatory, and policy matters affecting a range of health care services and programs. Notably, Lindsey was lead trial counsel for the United States in United States v. Florida, a case in which the United States proved during a two-week bench trial that the State of Florida was unnecessarily institutionalizing hundreds of children with disabilities in nursing homes and placing hundreds of others at serious risk of such segregation. For several years, Lindsey taught the Disability Law Seminar as an adjunct professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. Prior to joining the Department of Justice, Lindsey was a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. She graduated summa cum laude from Columbia College of Columbia University and received her JD, cum laude, from New York University School of Law.