Rebecca Cokley

Rebecca Cokley currently serves as the first U.S. Disability Rights Program Officer for the Ford Foundation, a landmark role in American philanthropy. She arrived there after founding the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress and, during the Obama administration, serving as executive director of the National Council on Disability — a career built on turning disability policy into lived change.

Born Rebecca A. Hare on December 4, 1978, in California and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, she was born with achondroplasia, as were both of her parents, who met at a Little People of America convention in the 1970s. She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2001, then spent five years at the Institute for Educational Leadership building tools to empower youth with disabilities, and joined the Education Policy Fellowship Program in 2006.

Her influence extends across government and international institutions, with expert testimony or consultation for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the World Bank, the Social Security Administration’s Ticket to Work Advisory panel, and the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2015 she was inducted into the inaugural Susan M. Daniels Disability Mentoring Hall of Fame, received the Frank Harkin Memorial Award from the National Council on Independent Living, and was named Brandeis University’s 2020 Richman Distinguished Fellow in Public Life.

A published voice in the field, her works include “the 411 on Disability Disclosure” and “Paving the Way to Work: A Guide to Career-Focused Mentoring,” along with policy agendas for the National Youth Leadership Network. In 2007 she recruited Paul Steven Miller to Senator Obama’s Disability Policy Committee, a collaboration that helped shape disability policy at the highest levels of government.