About Us: The Community Living Exchange Collaborative : ILRU

Back to About Us | Bio Sketches for the Community Living Exchange Collaborative Team: Rutgers CSHP/NASHP | ILRU | Boston College Graduate School of Social Work

ILRU

Lex Frieden | Richard Petty | Darrell Lynn Jones | Jay Klein | Sharon Finney

is Director of ILRU and Senior Vice President of the Institute for Rehabilitation and Research, of which ILRU is a Division. Frieden is one of the early leaders in the independent living movement and founder of ILRU. Frieden authored several important documents on independent living and consumer direction, including a definition of independent living (published in 1978) which is still used throughout the field (Frieden et al). He has served as the head of a federal agency, the National Council on the Handicapped. Under his leadership, the Council authored and published Toward Independence, the report from which the Americans with Disabilities Act was developed. He convened the group of national experts which authored The Blue Ribbon Panel Report on Personal Assistance Services in 1999.

Frieden has served as director of ILRU for over twenty years, excluding his term as head of the NCH. He has served as the President of Rehabilitation International, an organization fostering independence, employment, and self-determination on the part of people with disabilities worldwide. Frieden chairs the National Council on Disability, a 15 Member council appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The overall purpose of the Council is to promote policies, programs, practices, and procedures that guarantee equal opportunity for all people with disabilities, regardless of the nature or severity of the disability, and to empower them to achieve economic self-sufficiency, independent living, and inclusion and integration into all aspects of society.

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Richard Petty

serves as director for the Community Living Exchange Collaborative at Independent Living Research Utilization (ILRU) in Houston. He has successfully headed the Olmstead training project and the IL NET projects which provide training and technical assistance for advocates, centers for independent living and statewide independent living councils. Before coming to ILRU, Petty served as executive director of a center for independent living for ten years and worked with advocates and state officials in Arkansas to improve home and community services. One result was the state's implementation of the Cash and Counseling demonstration project. Prior to his work in a center for independent living, as a state official, Petty also coordinated state planning for Arkansas' Social Services Block Grant program and headed grants management activities for the state's rehabilitation agency. Petty co-founded the Arkansas ADA Roundtable, an organization which provided training and technical assistance to state and local government officials, businesses, and others. Petty trained hundreds of state officials on implementation of Title II of the ADA. Petty earned a BA in English literature from Hendrix College in 1974 and will receive an MBA from the Bauer School of Business at the University of Houston in April 2004.

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Darrell Lynn Jones

is the Program Training Coordinator for the Community Living Exchange Collaborative at Independent Living Research Utilization (ILRU) in Houston. She coordinates training and publications and provides direct technical assistance to Systems Change grantees funded through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Prior to this position she was the first executive director of the Rochester Center for Independent Living in Rochester, New York; subsequently executive director of the Association of Independent Living Centers in New York; and most recently Training Specialist at the National Council on Independent Living. She has provided training and technical assistance to disability organizations and programs for over 15 years. Ms. Jones has managed a consumer-directed personal assistance service, a Medicaid waiver service and a nursing facility transition project. She holds an M.A. in Counseling from Eastern Michigan University and a B.A. in Sociology from Millsaps College. She is co-author of "A Guide to Planning Accessible Meetings."

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Jay Klein

is the Director of the Center for Housing & New Community Economics (CHANCE), Institute on Disability, University of New Hampshire (IOD), Durham, New Hampshire, and a principal member of the management team for the Exchange at ILRU. With CHANCE Klein works to offer alternatives to approaches that segregate, congregate, and control people with disabilities. He is also the Director of the National Home of Your Own Alliance, an organization which has supported the implementation of home ownership activities in 23 states through federal policy analysis and ownership-related resource development. The Alliance now provides information and referral services and is conducting research through a project funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research to systematically investigate the quality of life outcomes of home ownership for people with severe disabilities.

Klein has also served as Associate Director of the National Program Office on Self-Determination at the Institute on Disability, University of New Hampshire and as an instructor with the Departments of Education and Social Work at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire and Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. He holds an MSW from the University of Wisconsin and has published widely on disability and housing.

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Sharon Finney

is the Project Associate of the Community Living Exchange Collaborative at ILRU. In this position, she provides organizational support for national trainings, publications, online presentations, and project staff. She joined ILRU in 1998, after working in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) at Baylor College of Medicine where she assisted the Education Coordinator of the PM&R Residency Program. After joining the staff of ILRU, Ms. Finney served as coordinator for the RRTC on Managed Care and Disability, RRTC on Personal Assistance Services, and the Olmstead Project Supporting Personal Assistance and Home and Community-Based Services Web sites. Ms. Finney's background includes coordination and scheduling of various national training conferences, preparation of reports, coordination and preparation of curriculum design and evaluation, Web design and facilitation of Web casts. And, as a parent of children with disabilities, Ms. Finney brings various personal experiences to the project.

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Back to About Us | Bio Sketches for the Community Living Exchange Collaborative Team: Rutgers CSHP/NASHP | ILRU | Boston College Graduate School of Social Work

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