[Community-Service] Meet a Community Achiever: Emily Gindlesperger - Blind Equality Achievement Month Day 27 @CSD!

[Stacie Leap]

Welcome to Blind Equality Achievement Month!

Podium or not, she will fight for her rights! Meet our 27th Community
Achiever, Emily W. Gindlesperger from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania!



My life has always been centered around volunteering and non-profit work.
Growing up I never had a paying job in high school, but always volunteered
in the local Meals On Wheels kitchen, other soup kitchens, and other church
activities.  I was a store manager for a brief time, before returning to
non-profit and being the office manager for a local hospital.  I had two
children in two years, and which point I left my position to be a
stay-at-home mother a few months before my daughter was born.  She was born
with a rare eye condition leaving her totally blind and me on my way to
joining the National Federation of the Blind.

In 2008, I reached out to Jim Antonacci and was referred for the Parent
Leadership Program of the National Organization of Parents of Blind
Children.  I spent my first convention in Detroit and then my first
Washington Seminar in 2009 and there has been no turning back.  Though I
had done some policy work at my office job, and subsequent community
boards, being in Washington DC and being part of the organized blind
movement changed me.

I was given the continued support of Mr. Antonacci and now President Lynn
Heitz to continue my work reaching out to our Federal Representatives,
meeting with them and working with National to form relationships and
support for our movement.

The new level of state engagement has provided an appointment for me on the
state advisory committee for the education of children with blindness and
visual impairment.  In order to solidify my commitment and my future with
the Federation and its movement, I will be starting my master’s program in
government, a concentration in Law and Public Policy in January 2022.

She is Emily Gindlesperger, second Vice President of the Pennsylvania state
affiliate, Legislative Director for NFB Pennsylvania, and a monumental
contributor to the blind movement!
#BEAM
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