Diane Coleman
President, CEO
dcoleman@notdeadyet.org
708-420-0539
Diane Coleman is the President and CEO of Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group which she founded in 1996 to give voice to disability rights opposition to legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia. Prior to 2012, she served for three years as Director of Advocacy at the Center for Disability Rights in Rochester, New York and twelve years as Executive Director of Progress Center for Independent Living in Forest Park, Illinois. Ms. Coleman has presented invited testimony four times before Subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. She is a well-known writer and speaker on assisted suicide and euthanasia, and has appeared on national television news broadcasts for Nightline, CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC and others, as well as National Public Radio. She co-authored Amicus Briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court and various state courts on behalf of Not Dead Yet and other national disability organizations on the topics of assisted suicide and surrogate health care decision making. She has a law degree and Masters in Business Administration from UCLA. From 2003 to 2008, she was a member of the adjunct faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co- taught two graduate courses in disability and medical ethics. Ms. Coleman is a person with neuromuscular disabilities who has used a motorized wheelchair since the age of eleven.
John B. Kelly
Communications Director & New England Regional Director
jkelly@notdeadyet.org
617-952-3302
Boston-based disability rights activist and writer John B. Kelly is a longtime member of Not Dead Yet. As someone commonly referred to as “paralyzed from the neck down” from a spinal cord injury, John was influenced by the writings of Paul Longmore about the “right to die” cases of the 1980s and 90s – people with similar disabilities who were put on the fast track to death while being denied the resources to live.
As director of Second Thoughts MA: Disability Rights Advocates Against Assisted Suicide, John has again and again helped stop the legalization of assisted suicide in Massachusetts. In 2012, he squared off thrice against assisted suicide proponent Dr. Marcia Angell, and more recently his work has been featured in outlets such as as the Boston Globe, Worcester Telegram, CNN’s “United Shades Of America,” WSHU-AM in CT, and elsewhere. John has a Masters degree in Sociology from Brandeis.
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Anita Cameron
Director of Minority Outreach
anitacameron007@gmail.com
585-259-8746
Anita Cameron began working as Not Dead Yet’s Director of Minority Outreach in January 2017. She has met with national and state policy makers and written persuasively about opposition to a public policy of assisted suicide from the perspective of communities of color who experience disparities in access to healthcare.
From 2004-2006, she worked at the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) in Washington, DC, as the DC Metro Disability Vote Organizer, working with the Board of Elections and Ethics to increase voting access and get disabled people to serve as poll workers and election judges.
Anita worked as Systems Advocate for the Center for Disability Rights in Rochester, NY, from 2006-2010, addressing a broad range of disability rights and access issues with advocates and lawmakers at the local, state and national levels.
In 2004, while in Washington, DC, Anita trained to become a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) member. In 2008, she helped to form the first CERT class consisting of people with disabilities in Rochester, New York. After joining Denver CERT in 2011, Anita became the first visually impaired CERT instructor for the State of Colorado, and in 2013, became a CERT Program Manager for the State. She has assisted in numerous exercises and real-world incidents with Denver CERT, including serving as a radio communications operator during the Colorado Flood of 2013 and remotely assisting survivors of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in disaster relief in 2017. Anita has written extensively, for numerous agencies and publications, on emergency and disaster preparedness for people with disabilities, as well as the role and participation of the disability community in emergency management.
Since 1986, Anita has volunteered with ADAPT, a national, grassroots disability rights organization. In 32 years of involvement, she has risen to a position of national leadership. She was invited to the White House on two occasions, has met three sitting U.S. Presidents and two Vice-Presidents, helped to organize a national march, and was published in a book by the late award-winning writer and historian, Howard Zinn.
Anita also serves on the National Disability Leadership Alliance’s Racism Taskforce and co-Chairs the Intersectionality and Diversity Workgroup for ADAPT.
She holds a degree in Biology from University of Illinois at Chicago Circle and a degree in Computer Information Systems from Community College of Denver.
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Jules Good
Consultant c/o
dcoleman@notdeadyet.org
Jules Good (they/them) is a disability justice activist and policy analyst. They are late-Deaf and multiply-disabled. Jules holds a Master in Public Policy from the University of New Hampshire, and formerly worked as the Relay and Assistive Technology Outreach Specialist with Northeast Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services. They also founded their own organization, Neighborhood Access, which works with communities to help them make their presence and practices more accessible to disabled people. Jules serves as a member of the White House Office of Public Engagement Disability Advisory Council, as well as a member of the Fair Fight Action Disability Council. Jules has worked with nonprofits, state agencies, and private businesses to aid in making their practices and processes more accessible to the disabled community. They are deeply involved in disability justice work both locally in their current home state of New Hampshire, and nationally.
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Stephen Drake, MS
Consultant
sdrake@notdeadyet.org
585-353-7438
Stephen Drake obtained his Masters Degree in Special Education from Syracuse University in 1991. Since 1980, he has worked in the field of disabilities, serving in programs for children and adults with labels of mental retardation. He left the doctoral program at Syracuse University in Special Education in 1997 to become a full time activist and researcher working with Not Dead Yet. In 2001, he was a recipient of a Positive Images Award from TASH, a national disability rights organization, for “Exemplary Achievement in Disability Media Coverage and Advancement.” He is a nationally acknowledged expert on media coverage of disability issues. He is the co-author of a 1998 article in the journal Disability & Society titled “Disability, Eugenics and the Current Ideology of Segregation: a modern moral tale.” In addition to his various media appearances, Mr. Drake appeared on 60 Minutes II as a representative of Not Dead Yet in their profile of bioethicist Peter Singer. Stephen Drake is a person with “invisible” disabilities and a survivor of a doctor’s recommendation of passive euthanasia.