President Obama Recognizes Disability Rights Leader Kathy Martinez

President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominated Kathy Martinez, for Assistant Secretary for Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), Department of Labor.

Kathy Martinez is an internationally recognized disability rights leader specializing in employment, asset building, independent living, international development, diversity and gender issues. She was appointed Executive Director of the World Institute on Disability (WID), based in Oakland, CA, in 2005. Martinez, blind since birth, directs Proyecto Visión, WID's National Technical Assistance Center to increase employment opportunities for Latinos with disabilities in the United States, and Access to Assets, an asset-building project to help reduce poverty among people with disabilities. At WID, she also led the team that produced the international webzine DisabilityWorld in English and Spanish.

In 2002 she was appointed by President Bush as one of 15 members of the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency advising the President and Congress on disability policy. In 2005 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appointed Martinez as one of eight public members of the newly-established State Department advisory committee on disability and foreign policy. In 2007 she was appointed a member of the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a Congressionally-created agency dedicated to research and projects in conflict management.

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