Our Team
Daniel is one of the co-founders of CIP, with extensive experience in the area of disability and inclusive development in research, operations, and capacity building. Prior to CIP, he was a senior economist at the World Bank and has worked with a wide range of other international development agencies, governments, academics, and civil society organizations.
In terms of research, Daniel has published extensively on disability measurement issues, the relation between disability and poverty, and estimating the extra costs of living with disability. Recently he has focused on designing inclusive social protection programs and disability assessments.
As chair of the Analytical Working Group of the UN Statistical Commission’s Washington Group on Disability Statistics, Mont oversaw the testing and analytical plan that led to the development of census and survey questions that have been adopted in many countries.
He also worked with UNICEF to develop the Child Functioning Module and Child Functioning Module – Teacher Version, for identification of disability in children, an inclusive education module for surveys, and guidance on making education management information systems more inclusive. He has developed and been involved with the implementation of and analysis of disability surveys in many countries and in the training of national statistical offices.
He has also been a trainer for OPDs and other civil society organizations on policy analysis and research on inclusion, and has worked with UNDP ,OHCHR and UNESCAP on developing an indicator framework for reporting on the CRPD.
He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BA in Economics from Swarthmore College. Based in the US.
Maria Ní Fhlatharta is a legal researcher and human rights advocate with experience spanning academia, government, international organizations, and grassroots movements. She is Deputy Director at the Center for Inclusive Policy (CIP), where she leads research and policy work on community support, including work on the care and support agenda. Her work bridges disability rights with LGBTQIA+ equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). She has supported law and social policy reforms across disability and mental health, LGBTQIA+ equality, reproductive justice, and prisons and forensic settings. Before CIP, Maria worked as a researcher at the Centre for Disability Law and Policy where she also co-directed the International Disability Law Summer School. She previously served as a Senior Policy Analyst with the New Zealand Ministry of Health.
Maria is Co-Founder and former Co-Director of Disabled Women Ireland, a feminist OPD. She has served on the Board of the Disability Rights Fund/Disability Rights Advocacy Fund as Co-Chair. Her main interests are legal capacity and supported decision making, deinstitutionalization and independent living, health rights and disabled people who experience multiple forms of marginalisation. She holds a Bachelor of Civil Law (Hons) and an LLM in Comparative International Disability Law and Policy from the University of Galway. With leadership rooted in both lived experience and technical expertise, she has built a career around one central belief: meaningful inclusion happens when change is grounded in human rights, shaped by evidence, and led by disabled people themselves. She lives in Aotearoa New Zealand with her wife.
Abner is a disability rights activist and Co‑founder of the Life Haven Center for Independent Living, working with OPDs, governments, NGOs, and UN agencies to advance disability‑inclusive policies and data systems. He serves in national and international bodies, including as Vice‑Chair of the NCDA Subcommittee on Auxiliary Social Services, and contributes to CRPD, ESCR, and UPR parallel reports. His work includes developing tools such as the Disability and Needs Assessment System (DNAS) and the Humanitarian Disability Needs Estimation and Screening Tool (HD‑NEST), and advancing research and legislation on disability‑related costs, inclusive social protection such as the disability support allowance, disability support services, and disability-inclusive anti-trafficking.
María Antonella Pereira is a researcher and disability rights advocate in international development and disability inclusion. Her work has mainly focused on social protection and disability policy in low- and middle-income countries. She has worked at CIP to foster disability inclusion within care agenda policy and research. In the past, Maria Antonella has worked with various government and research organizations, including the Inter-American Development Bank and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has a Master of Science in International Development Policy from the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Barnard College, Columbia University.
Meenakshi is a long-time disability rights activist who contributed to numerous campaigns to improve laws and policies at the states and Union level in India. Passionate about CRPD compliant policy analysis, she has reviewed the Union and States budget from a disability perspective every year since 2012 for the People Budget initiative led by CBGA. Based in India.
Paulina is a communications specialist from Argentina, with a background in journalism and a postgraduate diploma in media management. She has over a decade of experience in communications and several years working specifically on human rights across diverse areas, including labor rights, sexual and reproductive rights, migration and refugee issues, and environmental justice. She has worked with international organizations such as UNHCR and IOM in the region, led communication campaign projects for the ILO and UNFPA, and collaborated closely with civil society groups such as Consciente Colectivo, a youth-led environmental initiative. Based in Argentina.
Heather is a Research Administrator with a DC-based university where her focus is ending violence against women. With over 20 years of professional experience, Heather brings a variety of expertise to CIP including budget development and long-range planning, finance and operations, personnel management, process/systems improvement strategies, and pre/post award administration. Based in the US.
Associates
Jennifer Madans
Senior Advisor
Jennifer has contributed to a wide body of written work addressing all aspects of disability data collection which is used internationally.
She served as the head of the Secretariat of the Washington Group on Disability Statistics from its inception until the present, and has conducted numerous training sessions, provided extensive technical assistance, and has been an invited to speak at a range of events on the collection and analysis of disability data at the country, regional and international level. Based in the US.
Mónica is an assistant professor at Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia and a Research Associate at Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at Oxford University. She has experience working on disability, poverty and social protection in LMICs. She has worked with countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Based in Colombia.
Polly has over 18 years’ experience in public finance. Her current research work spans both disability-specific issues – with a particular focus on the inclusion, equality and rights of persons with disabilities in Official Development Assistance – and wider economic justice questions. Her freelance clients have included the Overseas Development Institute, the UN Secretariat, UN Women, Development Initiatives, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Disability Forum, CBM Global, the Civil Society Financing for Development Mechanism, the Civil Society Partnership for Development Effectiveness, the Gender and Development Network and HelpAge International. Polly previously worked at the European Network on Debt and Development, ADD International, the UK Parliament International Development Committee, and the UK National Audit Office. She holds an MPhil from Cambridge University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Based in the UK.
Zach is an Associate Professor at the Stony Brook School of Social Welfare where he researches the economics of disability in the United States and globally. At Stony Brook, he directs a research program on the Disability Squeeze that documents the extra costs associated with living a disability and translates findings into policy recommendations. Based in the US.
Board
Sav is a human rights advocate who has spent the last twenty years working in the international development sector and related fields, particularly Asia and the Pacific. He has focused extensively on disability inclusion, and has advised the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on disability and other inclusion issues. Based in Australia.
Over 45 years of experience with disability and working with one of the largest NGOs in India providing educational services for disabled children and supporting mainstream educational institutions enroll and retain disabled students. He is a development economist with professional qualifications in finance and management, accounting and jurisprudence. Based in India and the UK.
Co-lead of Rights Insight’s Medusa Project, focusing on the scaffolding needed by disability and other human rights activists to address current times. Independent consultant specializing in participatory philanthropy and global disability rights and inclusion. She served as the Founding Executive Director of the Disability Rights Fund (DRF) and Disability Rights Advocacy Fund (DRAF), participatory grantmakers that helped pioneer the inclusion of people with lived experience in global philanthropic practice. Based in the US.
Lan Anh is a disability rights and inclusive development leader in Vietnam with more than two decades of experience in policy advocacy, accessibility, independent living, and social inclusion. She currently serves as Director of the Action to the Community Development Institute (ACDC) and Vice President of the Vietnam Federation on Disability (VFD). She has contributed to national policy processes on disability rights and was actively involved in advocacy supporting Vietnam’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2014. She also works with international development partners on research, capacity building, and disability-inclusive development. Based in Vietnam.
Rosangela Berman Bieler is a Brazilian long-time disability rights activist. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Salamanca in Social Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities and, for the past four decades, has dedicated her career to international disability rights and inclusive development.
A quadriplegic since adolescence, Rosangela is one of the founders of the Independent Living Center of Rio de Janeiro (CVI Rio, 1988) and the Inter-American Institute on Disability and Inclusive Development (iiDi, 1999). As the led of iiDi, she played a key role in the development of the UNCRPD.
She has been a promoter of several pioneering Brazilian and international initiatives in partnership with disability rights groups, and She is also serving in the Boards of IiDi in Montevideo (UY) and as a lifelong Senior Fellow of the Ashoka and Synergos Foundations.
Living in the USA since 1995, Berman Bieler has served as a consultant to multilateral organizations such as the IADB, the WB, UN agencies, and bilateral development agencies.
Rosangela has joined UNICEF in February 2011 as Senior Adviser on Children with Disabilities and completed her mandate as Global Lead on Disability in October 2022, after collaborating with the development and the adoption of UN Disability Inclusion Strategy (UNDIS) and UNICEF’s Disability Inclusion Policy and Strategy (DIPAS) towards 2030.
Susie Hoffman
Member
Susan M. Hoffman is Public Service Senior Counsel at Crowell & Moring LLP, where she has led the firm’s pro bono program for 37 years. Her work has encompassed representation of low-income individuals — including immigrants, criminal defendants, and domestic violence survivors — as well as racial justice and other impact litigation. Beyond her role at Crowell, she has served as D.C. Bar President (2019–2020), co-chair of the D.C. Circuit Standing Committee on Pro Bono Legal Services, president of the D.C. Bar Foundation, and two-term president of the Washington Council of Lawyers.
Ms. Hoffman received her B.A. from Indiana University and her J.D. from The George Washington University Law School, after which she clerked for Judge Harold H. Greene of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia before joining Crowell & Moring in 1988. Her contributions to the profession have been recognized with numerous honors, including the Legal Aid Society’s Servant of Justice Award, the Council for Court Excellence’s Justice Potter Stewart Award, and the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment & Appeals Project Founder’s Award, among others.
Tom is a British scholar on disability and inclusion and disability rights activist, He currently serves as a member of CIP’s Board and Professor of disability research at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was one of the WHO team that produced WHO/World Bank World Report on Disability (2011). His books include The Sexual Politics of Disability (1996) and Disability Rights and Wrongs (2006) and several novels. He has been a board member of Equal Lives, chair of the Northern Disability Arts Forum and chair of Disability Action North East (all UK OPDs).