Maria Ferraro was appointed Member of the Executive Board and Chief Financial Officer of Siemens Energy AG and Member of the Executive Board and Chief Financial Officer of Siemens Energy Management GmbH effective May 1, 2020. Prior to her appointment, she held several senior management positions in Corporate Finance within Siemens in the United Kingdom, as well as in Canada, Germany and the United States. Before being appointed Chief Financial Officer of Siemens Energy, Maria Ferraro held the position of Chief Financial Officer for the Operating Company Digital Industries as well as Chief Diversity Officer at Siemens AG. Maria Ferraro was born and educated in Canada. She is a designated Chartered Accountant and spent her early career with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Nortel Networks, holding a variety of roles in Canada and on a global level whilst gaining in-depth experience in European and Asian markets. 

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Kathy Martinez an internationally recognized and disability rights leader, joined Disability Rights Advocates as President/CEO in March 2021 after having spent six years as SVP, Head of Disability and Accessibility Strategy for Wells Fargo. While with Wells Fargo, Kathy helped to weave disability into the overall diversity agenda to expand the bank’s capabilities and programs to better serve both employees and customers with disabilities.
Previously, she served as Assistant Secretary of The Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) at the U.S. Department of Labor. Martinez led ODEP in putting policy priorities into practice through several innovative grant programs. These include Add Us In, through which a nationwide consortia worked to increase the capacity of small businesses to employ people with disabilities. The grant program also included the Employment First State Leadership Mentor Program, through which several states received support to promote community-based, integrated employment as the primary outcome for people with significant disabilities.


She is currently serving on the board of The American Association of People with Disabilities and has served on the boards of The National Council on Disability, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the State Department’s advisory committee on disability and foreign policy.
A graduate of San Francisco State University, Martinez speaks and publishes on a wide array of topics related to disability employment, including the emergence of disability as an essential component of workplace diversity and inclusion and the importance of expectation in ensuring youth with disabilities grow up with an assumption of work—a topic on which Martinez, who herself was born blind, offers compelling and personal perspective.

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Phyllida is an appearance activist and CEO of Face Equality International. After sustaining life-changing facial scars in a car accident in 2015, she set out to reshape the negative narratives that dictate the public perception of scars and facial differences. She is a passionate face equality campaigner, aiming to gather momentum for the equity and inclusion of the facial difference community. She is a TEDX speaker, occasional artist, and a model with Zebedee Management.

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Morten Bonde is a skilled senior art director with twenty years of experience developing advertising campaigns for brands in Denmark and abroad. He’s worked with both large and small companies and most recently has been responsible for a number of successful LEGO commercials and animated short films. Oh, and he’s legally blind!

Morten has an incurable eye disease, causing him to slowly lose his sight. In 2016, his vision was so severely reduced that his life couldn’t continue as before. His whole world collapsed.


In his book Sentenced to Blindness – Now What? Morten shares how he decided to see possibilities rather than limitations. With research into the human mind, the practice of mindfulness behavior and meditation and four challenges in four months to reprogram his subconscious mind, he shares how he decided to grow bigger than his greatest life-challenge. BLINDNESS!

Today Morten has an active career in the LEGO Group, and is a published author and motivational speaker on self-management and self-motivation.

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 Beatriz Gonzalez Mellidez is an inclusive user experience professional based in Germany, Certified Professional in Web Accessibility CPWA (IAAP's WAS+CPACC) and User Requirements Engineer (CPUX-UR). 
Her current role is Principal Product Designer at SinnerSchrader, an Accenture Interactive company. She has worked as a UX consultant across several countries and in five languages. Her passion is problem solving for all, no exceptions. As a member of the German UPA (UXPA) she is mostly active in its accessibility working group, which she leads, contributing to best practice publications and the fronta11y.org article series for GAAD in German. Her interest in accessibility dates back to her teenage years creating websites with plain HTML in Spain. 

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 Hector is a Subject Matter Expert in accessibility, assistive technology and disability issues.


Microsoft Tech Evangelist for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Subject Matter Expert in accessibility, assistive technology and disability issues.

Previously, co-creator of the learning curve for eye gaze technology, a pedagogy for children (and often adults) to embrace technology despite complex physical, cognitive and emotional disabilities.

Specialties: Corporate Responsibility, Linking People, Sales, Sales Management, Product Launches, Public Speaking, Product Management, Market Analysis. 

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Graduated from Frankfurt Goethe University in Biochemistry, Alexandra Nothnagel worked in parasitology for the German Federal Agency of the German Federal Ministry of Health Paul-Ehrlich-Institute and as an Early Stage Researcher in Molecular Neurobiology with a Marie S. Curie Fellowship at ENS Paris. Alexandra is founder of the ResearchAbility initiative, an international multi-association project fostering inclusivity by supporting the careers of students and researchers with disabilities and assisting in making their professional environment accessible. Alexandra quickly became the Co-lead of the Diversity & Inclusivity working group in Marie Curie Alumni Association, since 2019 she is in the Board of directors of the French federation for students and young professionals with disabilities “100% Handinamique” where she leads the working group for students interested in science careers. Since 2020, Alexandra has a Proxy mandate for the French National Advisory Council for People with Disabilities in the working Group “European and international questions, application of conventions”. Alexandra joined Atos as Java techno-functional consultant and became certified Agile Scrum Product Owner naturally providing Accessibility consulting in her client projects with Public Sector and Defense as well as Health & Life Science client projects. As a consequence of her passion and activities for Accessibility and Inclusion, Alexandra became Assistant Program Manager of Atos Global Accessibility & Digital Inclusion Governance. In accordance with her scientific profile. Making use of her deep knowledge in Life Sciences and Biotechnology, being the former President of the Young European Biotech Network, Alexandra also joined the Atos Scientific Community focusing on the Augmented Humans & Co-Bots track. Alexandra lives with a chronic rare disease and is a Zebra in the autism spectrum, she advocates for inclusive societies and is working on the exchange between different groups of people with disabilities searching for conditions that favour the inclusion for all.

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Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren was elected Broward County Court Judge, (17 th Judicial Circuit,
Florida) in 1997; where she pioneered America’s first specialized Mental Health Court; dedicated to the decriminalization and diversion of persons arrested with mental illness, and neurocognitive disorders.

The Court is a national and global model; and has diverted over 23,000 women and men out of Broward County’s jail.

The Court was the model for The American Law Enforcement and Mental Health Project. This Congressional legislation piloted 100 mental health courts in the U.S. (2000).

Judge Wren has received many honors for her pioneering work: She was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on The President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. (2002). Voted Top 3 Finalists for the 2013 “Innovating Justice Awards” by The Hague
International Institute for Innovation of Law Foundation (HIIL Foundation) for the Mental. In 2015, The National Council for Behavioral Excellence in Advocacy Award for Elected Service in 2015.

Judge Wren is a Professor at Nova Southeastern University, College of Psychology and Neuroscience, and NSU Criminal Justice Institute.

She is an Author, A Court of Refuge: Stories from the Bench of America and First Mental Health Court; Judge Wren is a global speaker on Mental Health & Criminal Justice, Problem-solving Justice and Leading Cultural Change.

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Jessica McKay, Anthony Vasquez, Erica Braverman –  19th of October 2021, 8 pm GMT


Before becoming Knowbility’s Director of Community programs, Jay started her journey in education. First as a music therapist and then as an assistive technology specialist, with the goal of building inclusive learning environments for all. She serves as an advisory member for the National Center for Accessible Educational Materials, the Center on Inclusive Technology & Educational Systems and the State Leaders of Assistive Technology in Education.

With experience in community organizing, Jay understands the value of people power, building relationships and holding each other accountable to create more equitable and inclusive spaces. 

She will graduate from California State University Northridge with a Master of Science in Assistive Technology and Human Services in December 2021


Erica is from Michigan and moved to Austin to serve in AmeriCorps. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish from the University of Michigan, a Master of Arts in Teaching from Wayne State University and a certificate in UX Design from UC San Diego.

Erica started as a volunteer with Knowbility and competed in AIR in 2019 before joining the team. Prior to this she was a teacher working primarily with English learners. One of her first experiences with internet accessibility involved learning about the types of barriers that her students experienced when they interacted with English language mobile apps.

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Gavin Neate Founder and CEO of Neatbox

18 years working directly with disabled people in the charity sector combined with his determination to address the challenges his clients were facing on a daily basis led Gavin start his own solution led company. His unique skills and passion for positive change make him a superb evangelist for equality, diversity and inclusion.

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