Elizabeth MuhammadPark

I'm the Executive Director of Doors Are Opening, a nonprofit I founded to ensure that large public spaces are fully accessible for people with disabilities so we can get where we need to go without human assistance. This work is especially important with the advent of AI and technology advancing to the extent that humans may not be around to assist in the coming years. I'm totally blind myself, and as I was navigating around, I kept wondering what I was going to do in 10 or 15 years when jobs are automated. When I was an undergrad, I studied international relations and enjoyed it so much that I went back for my master's and did the same thing. During my academic work, I traveled extensively, some with the State Department and some through other opportunities to learn languages. I noticed that other countries have infrastructure where you don't need assistance from humans, and I kept wondering why we don't have this in the U.S. The honest reason is that people with disabilities are often forgotten, and accessibility is something that's thrown together last minute rather than considered from the outset. I've always worked in nonprofits. I was with the State Department for a little bit after grad school, and I worked with the National Federation of the Blind doing all sorts of work, from teaching Braille to advocacy and policy work at the state level in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., all across the Mid-Atlantic region. I also did translation work to make sure that students with disabilities had their access needs met. I'm starting Doors Are Opening in Philadelphia, where I'm from, using it as my prototype, then expanding it to Pennsylvania and taking it nationwide.