Name: Rochelle (Shelly) Baer

Title: CARD Selects Shelly Baer for their Special Recognition for Community Service Award!

Work area: Mailman Center for Child Development

Recognition Information: CARD has selected Shelly Baer for their CARD Special Recognition for Community Service Award. CARD annually selects a few community members to recognize those who go above and beyond with their dedication and commitment to the community. This year’s winner is our very own Shelly Baer. Her dedication and commitment embody the essence of what the Mailman Center is all about. She really shines a light for our community and Center. She will receive this award during an award luncheon on September 7th.

Short bio: Shelly Baer, is the Director of Leadership Training Initiatives and a licensed clinical social worker at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s, Mailman Center for Child Development. When she joined the Mailman Center eleven years ago, she joined the center’s Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) faculty and revamped the Center’s Interdisciplinary Training Program’s Understanding the Family Perspective curriculum, which educates pediatric residents and LEND trainees about the importance of understanding disability culture, health disparities and the family perspective. As part of the LEND curriculum, she assists in teaching the advocacy/leadership project section and shares her story of growing up with a disability. Ms. Baer is the supervisor and mentors our LEND self-advocate trainees and supervises MSW trainees. She runs Mailman’s three pipeline leadership development programs. One is for early to mid-level career professionals called the Emerging Transformational Leadership Program (ETLP), and one is for adults with disabilities called Project Self-Advocate Leadership Training (SALT.) And the newest one is for high school students with and without disabilities called Student Emerging Leaders Program (SELP.) Ms. Baer designed and teaches the disability content that is embedded into the medical school’s NextGen curriculum. She is currently a mentor for The American Association of People with Disabilities summer college mentoring program. Ms. Baer is the founder and co-director of the Bold Beauty Project, a non-profit that utilizes photography to break up stereotypes of women with disabilities to showcase their beauty and sensuality. She is a doctoral student in Leadership and Change at Antioch University.