In my senior year of undergrad, I led the creation of Georgetown’s inaugural Disability Community (DisCo) Graduation, an affinity graduation ceremony for disabled students. That year, Georgetown became the first Jesuit institution to host such an event. DisCo Grad has now become an annual event hosted by Georgetown’s Disability Cultural Center.
universal design
team leadership
event planning
After attending several of Georgetown’s affinity graduation ceremonies my junior year of college, I began to imagine what it would look like for there to be a graduation celebration for disabled students. I spent that summer talking with various staff members in different offices about what it would look like to create such an event. At the beginning of my senior year, I met with Dr. Amy Kenny, who had just been hired as the Inaugural Director of the Disability Cultural Center.
As we began planning the event, I applied for, and was eventually awarded, a grant from the Social Innovation and Public Service Fund, which supports student projects centered on social impact and the public good. From there, we formed a student planning committee. Together, we spent the rest of the academic year making decisions about the purpose, tone, and scale of the event, the symbolism, the guest speakers, and the plethora of logistics required for putting on an inaugural event.
The inaugural DisCo Grad hosted over 30 graduates and dozens of faculty, staff, and students who came to support the event. Each member of the student committee spoke at the event, as well as keynote speaker Tiffany Yu, a Georgetown alumna and public disability advocate. As of 2026, DisCo Grad is now in its fourth year and is an important part of Georgetown's commencement celebrations.