Mia Ives-Rublee

Few activists have changed how mass movements think about access the way Mia Ives-Rublee has. Born in South Korea with osteogenesis imperfecta and adopted to the United States at age three, she came to disability advocacy through lived experience. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she studied sociology while competing in Wheelchair Track and Road Racing and served as president of Delta Sigma Omicron, a disability service fraternity, before earning her master’s degree in social work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Her national breakthrough arrived in 2016, when she co-founded the Women’s March Disability Caucus and built the accessibility plans for the original 2017 march, ensuring one of the largest single-day demonstrations in American history included disabled participants rather than treating them as an afterthought. The work redefined what inclusive event organizing looks like and earned her a place among Glamour’s 2017 Women of the Year alongside fellow march organizers.

Recognition followed. UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Social Work presented her an Outstanding Alumni award in May 2019, and She the People named her among its 20 Women of Color to Watch in 2020. On December 20, 2021, President Joe Biden nominated her to the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.

Today she serves as Senior Director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress, shaping federal policy conversations as a policy analyst, social worker, and sought-after public speaker.