Vilissa Thompson is a Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW) from Winnsboro, SC. Vilissa is the Founder & CEO of Ramp Your Voice!, an organization focused on promoting self-advocacy and strengthening empowerment among people with disabilities.
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Being a Disability Rights Consultant, Writer, & Advocate affords Vilissa the opportunity to become a prominent leader and expert in addressing and educating the public and political figures about the plight of people with disabilities, especially women of color with disabilities.
Her advocacy niches are: Intersectionality, Disabled Black Women/WoC, Racism/White Supremacy, Sexuality, Education, & Social Work's Problematic View of Disability
She has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, NY Times, Buzzfeed, Bitch Media, Upworthy, Black Girl Nerds Podcast, Daily Beast, Daily Dot, and The Atlantic.
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She created the #DisabilityTooWhite viral hashtag that addressed the lack of diversity within the disability community, and how a lack of representation impacts disabled people of color and their ability to feel fully included and accepted within the community. Demanding that diverse disabled experiences be seen within media and the collective community is a mission for Vilissa’s advocacy focus, and she seeks to make this a permanent reality.
For Vilissa, being an advocate has afforded her the opportunity to share her life experiences as a disabled woman of color, as well as the tales from women she has encountered in her advocacy work. This ability led her to establish the Black Disabled Woman Syllabus, a resource that has garnered much attention and praise from those within academia and the disabled community about its focus on the experiences of a very underrepresented group.