Mary Kate Brown, M.Ed.

Founder & CEO

…dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny…”

Paulo Freire

Mary Kate has a lifetime of experience in and around the disability community, beginning as the daughter of an American Sign Language interpreter and continuing into adulthood as a fierce advocate for inclusion and understanding. When her first child, Josiah, was born with cerebral palsy, Mary Kate became a student of disabled life and disability policy.

Her experiences navigating a promising but flawed system among a well-intentioned but underinformed public inspired her to pursue a Master of Education degree at Vanderbilt University in the Learning, Diversity, and Urban Studies program. While there, she studied under and published with renowned scholar, researcher, Paralympian, and current Director of the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, Dr. Anjali Forber- Pratt. Mary Kate’s interests lie in disability as diversity, disability identity, and correcting misperceptions of disability.

Many people have encouraged Mary Kate to become a special education professional. There is a big difference between her goals and those of talented special educators. Special educators work on behalf of students with disabilities and their families to succeed in a system that was never designed to serve them. Mary Kate’s work breaks down barriers for individuals with disabilities by calling on non-disabled people to interrogate their own preconceptions about what it means to be a person of value. Too often disabled individuals are made to be and feel invisible, whether by the absence of video captions and handrails, or the quickly averted gaze or condescending tones of an acquaintance. Paulo Friere rightly said, “dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny.” People with disabilities have experienced dehumanization throughout history and Mary Kate is committed to creating a future where disability is accepted as a facet of human diversity.

Mary Kate Brown is the founder and CEO of The Center for Disability Integration, Special Assistant in the Immediate Office of the Administrator at the Administration for Community Living, and an adjunct professor in the Communication Studies Department at Middle Tennessee State University. She lives just south of Nashville, TN with her husband of twenty years, their four unique children, two guinea pigs, a lap dog named Suzy Q, a service dog named Hank P. Corndog, IV, and six chickens.