Lydia X. Z. Brown

Lydia X. Z. Brown is an advocate, organizer, attorney, strategist, and writer whose work focuses on interpersonal and state violence against disabled people at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, faith, language, and nation. Lydia is an adjunct lecturer in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Disability Studies Program at Georgetown University, as well as Self-Advocacy Discipline Coordinator for the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities Fellowship program. They are also an adjunct professorial lecturer in American Studies in the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies at American University. Lydia is currently founding executive director of the Autistic People of Color Fund, a project of collective care, redistributive justice, and mutual aid. They are co-president of the Disability Rights Bar Association and Disability Justice Committee representative on the National Lawyers Guild board. Lydia is currently creating Disability Justice Wisdom Tarot.

Lydia was formerly Policy Counsel for Privacy & Data at the Center for Democracy & Technology, focused on algorithmic discrimination and disability; and Director of Policy, Advocacy, & External Affairs at the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. They are a former member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights, visiting faculty at Tufts University, and chairperson of the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council. Often, their most important work has no title, job description, or funding, and probably never will.