Vilissa Thompson, LMSW
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 disabled people. Being a Disability Rights Consultant, Writer, & Activist affords Vilissa the opportunity to be a prominent leader and expert in addressing and educating the public and political figures about the plight of disabled people, especially Black women and femmes with disabilities.
She has been featured in ESSENCE for its Black History Now 2019 series and its “Woke 100 Women” 2018 list; spoke about her entrepreneurship and activism work for Forbes; invited to be a panelist for the Know Her Truths conference at Wake Forest University; invited to be a keynote speaker at Purdue University for its Focus Awards; and written for or appeared in Rewire, Bitch Media, Teen Vogue, CNN, MTV, Healthline, The Hill, NY Times (2020)/(2017), Black Women Radicals, Huffington Post, and Buzzfeed.
In addition to her activism work, she is represented as a speaker by CCMNT Speakers. She also acted as a consultant for the Sen. Elizabeth Warren 2020 Presidential campaign, where she assisted in the development of the Disability Rights & Equality policy plan.
She created the #DisabilityTooWhite viral hashtag in 2016 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 the media and the collective community is a mission for Vilissa’s activism focus, and she aims to make this a permanent reality.
Everything she does revolves around being unapologetically herself - Black, disabled, and making good trouble to shake up the status quo.
Thursday, January 27, 2022 | 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM (CT)
Our Experiences, Our Truths: Understanding the Intersectional Lives of Disabled People
When it comes to the largest minority group in the United States and the world, our experiences cannot be overlooked. This exclusion and erasure is especially harmful to the lives of disabled people of color, who are living intersectional lives that must be told fully to capture the unique barriers and triumphs that exist. Centering the experiences of disabled people of color, particularly Black disabled people, is imperative so that freedom and liberation can become reality. As Black disabled Ancestor Fannie Lou Hamer is infamously known to have stated, “Nobody's free until everybody's free.” The injustices we dismantle will be successful once solidarity leads the work that we are determined to do. That solidarity and work must include disabled people of color; no exceptions or excuses will suffice.
