Anne Kelsey

Position: Staff Attorney, Disability Rights New York
Past Fellows

2012-2014 DRA Fellow

How did you initially get involved with DRA? While I have a disability, I’d never really thought about the field of disability rights until I interned with the disability researcher at Human Rights Watch, which really opened my eyes. After that, I knew I wanted to do disability rights work and was interested in litigation. DRA is one of the premier disability legal centers in the country and it was a perfect fit. During law school I clerked at DRA’s Berkeley office working on emergency prep cases and researching the one-step problem in New York.

How has your DRA fellowship affected your future plans? Being a part of the New York emergency prep trial was an amazing experience; talking to so many people who’d been affected by Hurricane Sandy had a huge impact on me. Eventually I would like to go back to Africa to do disability rights work, using the skills and knowledge I’ve gained at DRA. While in some ways disability law in the U.S. is far ahead of developing countries, in some ways the problems are exactly the same. Women with disabilities in Uganda encounter similar barriers to healthcare as those in our Continuum health access case. There’s work to be done everywhere!

What to you is the importance of fellowships? Fellowships are such a great opportunity to bring young lawyers into the field of disability rights, and they are so necessary to laying the ground work for a life of disability rights work.