Biography

Rebecca Dosch Brown is currently a PhD student at the University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, with a focus on race and disability in education and youth health policy. She also serves as the MNLEND (Minnesota Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities) Program Director under an Education Specialist title. MNLEND is a year-long interdisciplinary leadership training program spanning 16+ disciplines and is funded by the Maternal Child Health Bureau (MCHB) of the US Department of Health and Human Services. She provides MNLEND both its day-to-day and big picture operational, technical, reportorial, financial, curricular, clinical, event, and editorial management.

Rebecca contributes to other Institute on Community Integration (ICI) community and research-based projects as an editor and a committee member of the ICI's Changing Landscapes (art events) and the ICI Cultural and Linguistic Competencies Workgroup, which advises in all areas of ICI's Strategic Plan. She also serves on two of the ICI Strategic Planning Committees with activities to improve equity and community partnerships and to reduce systemic barriers faced by people with disabilities and their families. She has successfully written and co-written funded grants for the MNLEND program and the AUCD Disability Diversity Fellowship program. Most recently, she co-wrote an awarded grant, Project SCOPE, which will train interdisciplinary professionals across the state to better support and provide culturally and linguistically responsive resources to families and kinship networks raising children exposed in utero to opioids and polysubstances.

Her work and community experiences span teaching, research, advising, editing, and writing in the areas of disability history, societal inclusion, culturally-responsive education, pan-indigenous rights, secondary and post-secondary education, design thinking, the visual arts, creative writing, anti-racism and anti-ableism training, and grassroots community organizing. 

Education

Post-graduate certificate in disability policy and services (The University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, 2015)

Post-graduate certificate in educational technologies (The University of British Columbia - Vancouver, 2005)

MFA (The University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa, 1997)