The Loreen Arbus Champion for Disabilities Award

Marcie Roth

Marcie Roth is Executive Director and CEO of the World Institute on Disability, one of the world’s first global disability-led organizations, advancing the rights of 1.3 billion people with disabilities worldwide.

Recently named by Forbes Magazine to their Fifty Over 50 Impact List, Marcie has served in executive leadership roles for advocacy and public policy organizations since 1995, leading coalitions committed to operationalizing accessibility and inclusion as intersectional imperatives for global social justice.

Appointed by President Obama to the U.S Department of Homeland Security - Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from 2009 to 2017, she served as Senior Advisor to the Administrator, establishing and directing the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination.

ASSEMBLY MEMBER REBECCA A. SEAWRIGHT

Assembly Member Rebecca A. Seawright represents the Upper East Side, Yorkville and Roosevelt Island in New York’s 76th Assembly District. As the first woman to serve the district and since her election in 2014, she is known as a strong voice for over 133,000 constituents, securing over $15 million in funding for public schools, senior centers, parks and non-profits.

Appointed by the Speaker in 2021, she holds the Leadership position of Chair of the Majority Steering Committee. Previously, she served in leadership as Secretary of the Majority conference, and as Chair of the Task Force on Women’s Issues. Nominated by her colleagues, she serves as a Director of the Legislative Women’s Caucus and works with her colleagues as part of the Bipartisan Pro-Choice, Jewish, Environmental, and Gun Reform Legislative Caucuses.

Inspired to renew the movement for the federal Equal Rights Amendment to guarantee that our rights are anchored in our State and US Constitutions, she authored and passed an Equal Rights Amendment to our New York State Constitution.

Nahid Shahalimi

Nahid Shahalimi is a human rights activist, artist, filmmaker, and an international consultant on gender. After being forced to leave Afghanistan in 1985, she has travelled back 19 times across Afghanistan collecting inspiring stories of hope and courage from women who are great testaments of resilience, which she collated in her book, Where Courage Bears the Soul: We the Women of Afghanistan: Tales of Courageous & Inspiring Afghan Women (published in 2017 by Elisabeth Sandmann Publishing).

Ms. Shahalimi is also the founder of the international campaign, “Stand Up For Unity” which promotes unity through diversity. The campaign travels around the world raising awareness by gaining endorsements from renowned figures including His Holiness Dalai Lama and others.

This is a continuation of a creative global series Nahid began in 2009 with “We The Women”, a collection of inspiring stories of courageous and resilient women from around the world told through 3 creative pillars involving portrait paintings, books and documentary films. “We the Women of Germany” was the first of this series and gained immense successes following its Portrait painting exhibitions that took place between 2009- 2014, where 100% of its proceeds were donated to UNICEF’s projects in Afghanistan. Nahid recently finished working on “We the Women of Afghanistan: a silent revolution” a multiple-award winning documentary film and promotion tour that kicked off on March 8, 2018, along with a special World Premiere screening at the UN German Mission (at the United Nations’ headquarters in New York City).

Lisa Sharkey

Lisa Sharkey is an author, publishing executive, green blogger, former network television news journalist, two time Emmy Award winner, and Peabody winner.

Currently, as a SVP Director of Creative Development at HarperCollins Publishers, over 50 of the books she has published have become bestsellers, including those written by women who have accomplished extraordinary things and changed the world by telling their stories including:

• The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

• Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall

• Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence by Tanya Selvaratnam

• Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do by Amy Morin

• Beauty Sick by Rene Englen, Ph.

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Cynthia Richie Terrell

Cynthia Richie Terrell is the founder and executive director of RepresentWomen, a founding member of the ReflectUS coalition, and an outspoken advocate for institutional reforms to advance women’s representation and leadership in the United States. Terrell and her husband Rob Richie helped to found FairVote - a nonpartisan champion of electoral reforms that give voters greater choice, a stronger voice, and a more representative democracy. Terrell has worked on projects related to women’s representation, democracy, and voting system reform in the United States and has worked extensively to help parliamentarians around the globe meet UN goals for women’s representation and leadership.

Previously, Terrell worked as campaign manager and field director for campaigns for the U.S. President, U.S. House and U.S. Senate, for governor and for state and city-wide initiative efforts, including a state equal rights amendment in Iowa and a city campaign for fair representation voting.

Mary Kim Titla

Mary Kim Titla is an American publisher, Native American youth advocate, journalist, former TV reporter (notably for KVOA in Tucson, where in 1987 she became the first Native American television journalist in Arizona, and later KPNX in Phoenix), and was a 2008 candidate for Arizona’s First Congressional District. Titla is a self described moderate democrat. As an educator her personal vision is “Everyone involved in a child’s education must go above and beyond to ensure every student receives a world class education in a safe environment.” She is an enrolled member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe.

She currently serves as as Executive Director for United National Indian Tribal Youth (UNITY), a national non-profit organization promoting youth leadership, citizenship and personal development among Native American youth. She also serves as a journalist for Women’s eNews’ new podcast series, ‘Indigenous Women Leaders Speak Out.”

Yasmin Vafa

Yasmin Vafa is co-founder and Executive Director of Rights4Girls. A human rights attorney and advocate, Yasmin’s work focuses on the intersections of race, gender, violence, and the law. She educates the public and policymakers on these issues and how they affect the lives of marginalized women and children.

Yasmin has successfully advocated for passage of several laws at the federal level, testified before the U.S. Senate and international human rights bodies, and has been recognized for her legislative advocacy by Congress. She is co-author of several reports, including The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls’ Story, which exposed the widespread criminalization of girls of color in the U.S. as a direct result of their victimization. The report has not only shaped the national conversation around women and girls’ incarceration, but helped inspire national efforts to decriminalize survivors of gendered violence.

Brooke Warner

Brooke Warner is publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What’s Your Book?, and three books on memoir. Brooke is a TEDx speaker, weekly podcaster (of “Write-minded” with co-host Grant Faulkner of NaNoWriMo), and the former Executive Editor of Seal Press. She writes a monthly column for Publishers Weekly.

In the pages of her book, Write On, Sisters! Brooke draws upon research, anecdotes, and her personal experiences from twenty years in the book publishing industry to show how women’s writing is discounted or less valued than men’s writing, then provides support to overcome these challenges. She also shines light on how women writers face not only ever-present historical and social challenges but also their own self-limiting beliefs.