CREATE Community Day

Ariana Aboulafia, Project Lead in Disability Rights in Technology Policy at The Center for Democracy & Technology. She is an attorney with a strong background in public interest advocacy and with particular expertise in disability, technology, criminal law, and the First Amendment. Aboulafia has served as a fellow to the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative and an assistant public defender in Miami-Dade County.

Clara Berridge, Associate Professor, UW School of Social Work; adjunct faculty in the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance; core faculty in the UW Disability Studies Program. Her research focuses on the ethical and policy implications of digital technologies used in elder care. She studies data and information technologies, such as remote monitoring systems and social robots, as well as the surveillance incentivized by AI of older adults and care workers. 

Jazette Johnson, CREATE Postdoctoral Fellow. She designs and studies technologies that promote trust, safety, and wellbeing in digital environments. Dr. Johnson studies how communities—including disabled people, older adults with dementia, and Black and Brown communities—experience, trust, and navigate AI-powered technologies, particularly in health and social contexts. She is currently developing AI tools to support adults with cognitive disabilities (intellectual and developmental disabilities, dementia) in understanding health information and leading community-based research focused on trust, accessibility, and ethical AI design.

Rua Williams: Assistant Professor of Computer Graphics and Technology and Director at the CoLiberation Lab at Purdue University. Rua is studying interactions between technology design, computing research practices, and Disability Justice.

Jon E. Froehlich, Professor, Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; Director, Makeability Lab; and an associate director of CREATE. He is a co-founder of Project Sidewalk, an open-source platform dedicated to mapping and assessing every sidewalk in the world using Human+AI techniques. His research is in Human-Computer Interaction explores urban informatics, accessibility, and other high-value social domains.

Kunal Mehta, UX Designer, UW Taskar Center. His current work focuses on making mapping more accessible and making last mile navigation easier through tools such as AccessMap.

Kenny Salvini, Cofounder and Executive Director at The Here & Now Project. Kenny co-founded the group alongside fellow individuals with spinal cord injuries who shared his vision of building a stronger, more connected community. Over the past decade, he has become a trusted mentor, advisor, and advocate—traveling across the U.S. to speak about empowerment within the SCI/D community, collaborate with national leaders, and share The Here and Now Project’s model with organizations seeking to create similar programs.

Anna Zivarts, Founder of the Nondrivers Alliance. A visually impaired parent and author of When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency (Island Press), Zivarts organizes disabled transit riders in Washington State through the Nondriver Alliance. Zivarts sits on the boards of the League of American Bicyclists, the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium, and serves as a member of the Transportation Research Board’s “Implications of Transportation Choices and Access on Public Health” Committee.