Ms. Susan E. Sygall

(KNFP-07)
Co-Founder and CEO/Executive Director
Eugene, Oregon
United States

Focus Areas

Social Justice
Accessibility / Disability Rights

Biography

Susan Sygall's adventurous spirit has taken her to destinations around the globe, backpacking through Europe and Israel, hitch-hiking through New Zealand, riding local buses through Mexico, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Thailand. Susan has spent all her adult life in a wheelchair. She makes it a habit to go beyond the boundaries the world has imposed. She says, many of the tenets of her Kellogg Fellowship serve as a measure of how well she is achieving her goals. Indeed, Susan has spent her career making a difference by creating programs to address unmet access and civil rights issues for people with disabilities. At the University of Oregon, while completing her master's degree in therapeutic recreation, she co-founded Mobility International (USA (MIUSA). MIUSA is a national-nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower people with disabilities around the world to achieve their human rights through international exchange and international development. Not only does MIUSA serve as a clearinghouse to link people with disabilities to exchange programs, MIUSA hosts its own bilateral and multilateral exchange programs with countries such as Bahrain, China, Mexico, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. Working for over 30 years, MIUSA has created a network of over 2000 alumni from over 100 countries. MIUSA is also leader in promoting inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of international development. Intrinsic to Susan's work is a focus on the issues of women with disabilities. To this end, MIUSA spearheaded such gatherings as the 1995 International Symposium on Women with Disabilities at the UN World Conference on Women Beijing. MIUSA's ongoing signature women's program, the Women's Institute on Leadership and Disability (WILD), has developed a network of over 200 disabled women activists in over 80 countries. Susan has received numerous awards in recognition of commitment to the rights of people with disabilities, including the President's Award from Bill Clinton in 1995, a MacArthur Fellowship in 2000, an honorary doctorate from Chapman University in 2011, and a Senior Ashoka Fellowship in 2013.