Andrew Imparato Appointed to Important Senate Post

The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) is pleased to announce today that AAPD’s President and CEO, Andrew Imparato, has accepted the position of Senior Counsel and Disability Policy Director for the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee after 11 years of service with AAPD.

“I am excited for this tremendous opportunity to work with Senator Harkin and a great policy team at the HELP Committee,” said Imparato. “I am sad to leave AAPD, but I am confident that the organization will continue to grow and thrive under the leadership of our Board Chair Tony Coelho and the talented Board and staff.”

Since joining AAPD as its first full-time President and CEO in 1999, Imparato has led the organization to become the nation’s largest cross-disability membership group with more than 100,000 members. Imparato has led AAPD’s efforts to create opportunities for youth and young adults with disabilities and personally invested time and energy in cultivating emerging leaders throughout the country. He has also applied his strong policy background to a number of bipartisan legislative and administrative initiatives in the last 11 years.

He has testified numerous times in the House and the Senate and been instrumental in the passage of significant pieces of legislation and policy initiatives focused on the disability community, including the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, the Community Living Attendant Services and Supports (CLASS) Act that was passed as part of the health reform legislation earlier this year, and the most recent passage of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. Imparato has also worked closely with the Obama administration to fulfill the President’s commitment to federal employment of people with all kinds of disabilities through federal hiring initiatives. Imparato also served for four years on the bipartisan Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Advisory Panel to the Social Security Administration.

Imparato’s work at AAPD has been recognized by the Secretaries of Transportation and Health and Human Services, the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of the Deaf, the National Association of Rehabilitation Research and Training Centers, the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation, and many others. He has appeared on national television multiple times, most recently being interviewed by Judy Woodruff on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer to discuss the significance of the 20th anniversary of the ADA.

Here are some clips of Andy in action:

Members of Class of 1987 Honored at AYA Assembly

Every fall, alumni leaders from the entire world of Yale alumni activity get together for the AYA Assembly in New Haven. The purpose of the weekend is to have these leaders re-connect with the University and connect with each other. It is also to celebrate the achievments of particularly noteworthy members of the Yale community.

This year, as the awards were passed out, it was hard to miss a trend . . . the Class of 1987 had a number of its members honored. So, here is the run down:

Darcy Troy Pollock was awarded with an AYA Leadership for her work with the Los Angeles Yale Communiity. Darcy’s father, Joe Troy ’60, instilled in her a passion for Yale – and Darcy honors her father with her alumni activities. Darcy has been active with Yale alumni activities since she graduated. In Los Angeles, she served on the board of the Yale club for many years, helped found Yale in Hollywood, and organized the LA area’s first two Day Of Service activities, winning the Yale Alumni Magazine’s DOS photo contest. Once she started raising a family, she noticed that most of the Yale Club’s activities were no longer relevant to her, so she decided to organize family friendly programs. She started with the 2009 Day of Service by organizing a family friendly project with P.S. Arts, re-painting a mural that was vandalized and putting together art packets for students saving the school significant fees. This was followed by starting Yale Family LA, a tremendously successful program of the club with signature programs including the Silent Cinema, Magic Castle, Skirball’s Noah's Ark exhibit, family singing group concerts and family service projects. Darcy is continuing her work with Yale Family LA as well as organizing a benefit concert with a celebrity and the Yale Whiffenpoofs and sustainability programs for alumni.

Four classmates -- Kathy Edersheim, Matt Meade, Jordan Warshaw and Tim Harkness -- had the activities they run honored with AYA Board of Governors Excellence Awards.

The Yale Global Alumni Leadership Exchange (YaleGALE), which Kathy Edersheim has been instrumental in leading, won the Outstanding SIG Volunteer Engagement and Leadership Award. For more information about YaleGALE, please visit its website at www.yalegale.org. It is truly an impressive undertaking.

The Yale Club of Pittsburgh received that Outstanding Small Cities Award, which Matt Meade accepted on behalf of the club.

Finally, our very own Feb Club Emeritus was recognized as this year's recipient of the Outstanding Collaboration Award.

If you click on the headline for this post, you can see the pictures from the event honoring our classmates and the other award recipients.

News from Steven Conn

I received the following note from classmate Steven Conn:

I've been in the history department at Ohio State since I finished grad school lo' these many years ago. In between professional obligations, I write op-eds pretty regularly for newspapers around the country. Writing them is cheaper than therapy. I live in the tiny but remarkably funky village of Yellow Springs with my wife Angela (Professor of Russian Lit, Rice '87) and our two extraordinary kids, Olivia and Zack.