About the Presenters

Peter Blanck
James Schmeling
Alan M. Dinsmore
Elizabeth A. Davis

Peter Blanck is the Charles M. and Marion Kierscht Professor of Law, and Professor of Psychology, and of Public Health at the University of Iowa. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University and his J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he served as President of the Stanford Law Review.

Blanck is the Director of the Law, Health Policy & Disability Center at the Iowa College of Law (see http://disability.law.uiowa.edu. The Center is a leader in law, technology, education and research, focused on improving the quality of life for persons living with disabilities. Based at the University of Iowa College of Law, with a satellite office in Washington, D.C., the Center concentrates on public policy and its impact on persons with disabilities, with an emphasis on employment, technology, self-determination and self-sufficiency.

Blanck has written over 100 articles and books on the ADA, received grants to study disability law and policy, represented clients before the United States Supreme Court in ADA cases, and testified before Congress. His work has received national and international attention. Blanck's recent books in the area include: The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Emerging Workforce (1998); Employment, Disability, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (2000).

Blanck is a former member of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, and has been a Senior Fellow of the Annenberg Washington Program in which capacity he explored the implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"). He has been a Commissioner on the American Bar Association Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law, chair of the American Psychological Association's Committee on Standards in Research, and President of the American Association on Mental Retardation's Legal Process and Advocacy Division. He has been a Fellow at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, and a Mary Switzer Scholar.

Prior to teaching at Iowa, Blanck practiced law at the Washington D.C. firm Covington & Burling, and served as a law clerk to the late Honorable Carl McGowan of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

James Schmeling, J.D., Associate Director of the Law, Health Policy & Disability Center (LHPDC), is a policy researcher and administrator for the LHPDC. As an administrator he is responsible for coordination of all Center projects with their various sponsors and he supervises the directors of the LHPDC's research, technology, and technical assistance and outreach teams. As a researcher in the LHPDC, he has focused on policy barriers and legal issues of importance in technology for independent living and environmental access. His studies include information technology in employment and education settings, small business and entrepreneurial activity, the Workforce Investment system, employment policy, work incentives, corporate culture, and other disability programs and policies. At the Center, Mr. Schmeling is project director for the NIDRR-funded IT Works project which examines IT-based employment for people with disabilities, senior researcher for the RRTC on Workforce Investment and Employment Policy for Persons with Disabilities, and senior researcher for the Technology for Independence: A Community-Based Research Resource Center. He also currently is a senior researcher for three DOL funded projects, a technical assistance project for Workforce Investment System grantees and Disability Program Navigators, the National Center on Workforce and Disability, and an evaluation of the Job Accommodation Network. He has published on entrepreneurial activity of individuals with disabilities, Supreme Court interpretations of the ADA, community-based research, and the applicability of the ADA to Ticket to Work Employment Networks.

Alan M. Dinsmore
2003 Member Public Communications and Safety Committee, Media Security and Reliability Council which establishes proposals to insure critical communications to the public, including persons with disabilities, during and after a disaser while protecting the means to do so. These recommendaitons will be provided to the MSRC which will provide recommendations to the Federal Communications Commission that, when implemented, will assure reliability, robustness, and security of broadcast and multi-channel video providers facilities throughout the United States.

Senior Governmental Relations Representative 1979 to the present at The American Foundation for the Blind Represents AFB to Congress and Executive branch agencies on issues related to appropriations, assistive technology, digital rights and copyright management, durable medical equipment reimbursement, and employment.

Prior to AFB employment, professional staff member U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging

Elizabeth Davis is an emergency management consultant specializing in Special Needs planning and related issues through her firm EAD & Associates, LLC in New York.