Employment Summit 2023:
Navigating Barriers

Presentations from the 2023 Employment Summit

Featured 2023 Summit Speakers

Learn from dedicated experts how you can tailor your services to support the people you serve. Topics include trauma-informed supports, accommodations, and discovery.

Dr. Karyn Harvey
Keynote Speaker

Keynote – Trauma-Informed Support and Employment
This session will explore the aspects of trauma that directly affect many individuals with disabilities. It will talk about the effects of that trauma and key ingredients for healing. Finally, there will be an emphasis on post traumatic recovery and growth through employment and employment supports.

  • Karyn Harvey has worked as a clinician in the field of intellectual disabilities for over 35 years. She has her Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from the University of Maryland.  She has written three books: Positive Identity Development, Trauma –Informed Behavioral Interventions and Trauma and Healing.  She currently does individual and group therapy with people with intellectual disabilities.   In addition, she regularly conducts trainings on trauma-informed support for people with IDD, trauma-informed leadership, and trauma-informed behavioral interventions for both state and individual organizations throughout the US and Canada.

Katie Wolfe Whaley
Using Discovery to Ensure Person-Centered Services

We all want to provide person-centered services but how do this in the real world? This session will engage us to think about what “discovery” means in practical ways. We will strategize ways to get to know people and to connect who they are with potential types of work.

  • Katie Wolf Whaley, MSW, is a Principal Investigator and Project Director at the University of Kentucky’s Human Development Institute. In her work she coordinates training and technical assistance on employment strategies for people with disabilities to service providers, job seekers, family members, and businesses. She works, in collaboration with partners across the state and nation, to build effective systems of support to increase opportunities for people to gain and maintain competitive integrated employment. Katie serves by Gubernatorial appointment as Chairperson of Kentucky’s Employment First Council, serves as the President of the Kentucky Chapter of the Association of People Supporting Employment First (APSE) and has served on the national board of APSE.

Barry Whaley
How the ADA Applies  to Jobseekers with Addiction and Recovery

In this session, we’ll explore how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to jobseekers throughout the employment process, starting with the application and continuing on the job. The session will cover the rights of both jobseekers and their eventual employers.

  • Barry Whaley works at the Burton Blatt Institute, Syracuse University. He is the Co-Principal Investigator and Project Director of the Southeast ADA Center, Principal Co-Collaborator with the University of Leeds (UK) Inclusive Public Spaces project, Co-Collaborator with the University of Queensland (AU) Gender, Equity, Disability, and Social Inclusion Mainstreaming Short Course, and Principal Investigator of the Mid-Atlantic Youth and Self-Advocacy project. His current research is examining the impact of intersectionality of race and disability, on three ADA-related issues: 1) employment, 2) access to digital technology, 3) long and short-term poverty.

    Barry is an alumnus of Indiana University and holds a Master of Science in Mediation, Arbitration, and Alternative Dispute Resolution from Sullivan University.