Stephanie Ban

Communication Assistant, COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence Project | Public Health

Image Description: Steph, a white woman with short brown hair is smiling. She is wearing blue glasses and a blue shirt, and her wheelchair is visible.

Bio: Steph Ban is a Communication Assistant at AUCD as part of the COVID vaccine confidence initiative.  Prior to joining AUCD, she was a housing and financial counselor at Great Lake Credit Union, where her main passion was making counseling as widely accessible as possible.  She developed plain language resources around housing and financial counseling that were used successfully with clients and community partners.  Steph also interned at the disability rights organization Access Living, focusing on policy research related to accessible housing, SSI benefits, and creating spaces that foster cross-disability organizing.  She brings a wealth of personal, activist, and academic experience with disability rights, as well as a deep passion for cross-disability inclusion, to her work with AUCD.

Steph graduated from the University of Chicago in 2018 with a bachelor's degree in History and a minor in Human Rights.  While at UChicago, she co-led two disability-focused organizations, the Organization for Students with Disabilities and the UChicago Symposium on Autism and Neurodiversity.  She is an independent scholar of U.S. disability history, with additional research interests in disability and musicology, and the Enlightenment.