Lisa is the founder and CEO of MERGE Inclusion Consulting where she provides comprehensive consultation, staff training and systems implementation to community entities committed to recreation, sport and social program inclusion of persons with diverse abilities. She has spent 35 years supporting individuals with IDD to be active and engaged within their community through her work as a direct support professional, Director of the Sollar Wellness Center, and the South Shore YMCA as its first-ever Associate Director of Inclusion.
Lisa and I discuss what authentic inclusion looks like for recreational programs, how she works with organizations to broaden their perspective of what inclusion means, and how she defines what she calls authentic inclusion. Authentic inclusion is the work we do to create systems-level changes to be inclusive in their culture and its reflected in their practices. Lisa also shares what’s doing to adapt and pivot to needs during this time of uncertainty. She’s leading a webinar called Inclusion is Not Cancelled and focuses on “keeping the social” of social distancing and argues for a language shift to be physical distancing, but using this time to still build inclusion into organizations.
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