Rebecca Cokley
Ford Foundation
United States
A renowned disability rights advocate and speaker, Rebecca Cokley joined serving Ford Foundation as its first U.S. Program Officer to oversee a Disability Rights Portfolio. Prior to Ford, she served as the co-founder and director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress, where she established a progressive policy platform that protected rights and services for people with disabilities and their families.
A three-time Presidential Appointee for President Barack Obama, Rebecca held key policy roles at the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and oversaw diversity and inclusion efforts at the White House in the first term.
Rebecca has spoken at Netroots Nation, New York City Comic-Con, Yale University, the Women’s March National Conference and given a TedX talk and has also been a guest on MSNBC and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. She was a Karl Pister Scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she graduated with a B.A. in Politics. In 2020 she was awarded the Richman Distinguished Fellow in Public Life at Brandeis University.
Rebecca is the proud spouse of Patrick, and mother of three. She is currently working on her first book.