Jeiri Flores, who uses a power wheelchair to navigate the world around her, names her chair as part of embracing it. Her current wheelchair’s name is Bubbles, and she claims it as part of her identity.
Flores’s advocacy journey started with her love of debate, as well as witnessing her Puerto Rican family struggle with interpreters. Flores noted, “Either I step up and I make sure that our message is clearly conveyed or I allow someone else to be our voice.”
Flores shared that her mother, Lourdes, “taught me how to be a fighter, how to persevere, how to never give up, and how to figure it out when it didn’t work right, regardless of what that looked like.” Flores majored in sociology at the State University of New York Brockport, which she says not only educated her but gave her a foundation and a platform to have in-depth conversations about key disability issues.
Those issues are the ones that Flores now tackles as a disability rights advocate who contributes her unique perspectives to her work with the Strong Center for Developmental Disabilities at the University of Rochester for their training, community service, research, and policy efforts.
Reflecting on the importance of advocacy, Flores said, “When we think of the fabric of human existence, I think of a lot of people’s hard work to erase us, so it’s important to raise awareness so that people can get comfortable with the idea that we’ve always been here.”
In Flores’s eyes, the disability community still hasn’t had its standout moment in history for nondisabled people to notice. But on a personal level, graduating college, having multiple keynote speaking opportunities, and working with students in higher education have all been standout moments for her.
Flores was born a month after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed, so she does not know a world without it. She appreciates the ADA as a foundation for opportunity and growth. And she is living out the legacy of the ADA simply by existing each day as a disabled person. “When they were thinking about folks being educated, folks existing on a college campus or working in the community, me being able to exist in my own home, the fact that I get to live somewhat on my own terms is a legacy within its own.”
Read all 35 stories of the New York-based leaders profiled in our ADA 35 edition.