About the Presenters

Laurie Powers is Co-Director of the Center on Self-Determination of the Oregon Institute on Disability and Development at the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU).  She is the Director of Research for the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center Consortium on Health and Wellness and the Principal Investigator of several other projects.  Laurie’s work focuses on identifying and putting into practice opportunities for people with diverse disabilities to express self-determination and for systems to support them.  She does work in self-determination systems change, leadership development, personal assistance services, abuse against women with disabilities, and transition from school to adult life.  Laurie is a founding member of the Alliance for Self-Determination, a cross-disability network of leaders focused on promoting self-determination. 

Michelle Putnam joined the George Warren Brown School of Social Work as an assistant professor on September 1, 2001.  She holds a Masters Degree in Gerontological Studies from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and a PhD in Social Welfare from the University of California, Los Angeles.  Prior to coming to GWB, Dr. Putnam was a NIDRR (National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research) Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Health and Wellness for Persons with Long-Term Disabilities at Oregon Health and Sciences University in Portland, Oregon.  Dr. Putnam’s research is in the area of aging and disability policy with an emphasis on political identification, political coalition building, and the way older adults and persons with disabilities think and feel about themselves as individuals in society.  Additional interests include the history and evolution of aging and disability policy and independent living policies for younger and older adults.  While at UCLA, Dr. Putnam was active in the Center for Policy Research on Aging, and at GWB will be teaching in the gerontology concentration.  Dr. Putnam has co-authored multiple book chapters and is currently working on several papers stemming from her research on aging and disability at UCLA and OHSU.

Support for this Web cast is provided by the National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) as part of its initiative to promote greater use of disability research findings by consumers, their families, service providers, and other non-researcher stakeholders.  Specific NIDRR project support comes from RIIL (Research Information for Independent Living), RRTC on Managed Health Care & Disability, and RTC on Health & Wellness. NIDRR is part of the U.S. Department of Education, and no endorsement of the opinions expressed as part of this Web cast by the Department should be inferred.