Haben Girma is an American lawyer and activist who fights for the rights of disabled people. She is an author of 2019 memoir named Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law.
Background
Ethnicity:
Haben Girma's mother was a refugee from Eritrea, and her father was from Ethiopia.
Haben Girma was born on July 29, 1988, in Oakland, California, United States. In 1983, five years before Girma was born, her mother Saba Gebreyesus fled Eritrea. After her mother settled in California and met Haben's father, Girma was born deaf-blind. She also has an older deaf-blind brother.
Education
In elementary school, Haben Girma learned Braille and later used a Bluetooth keyboard hooked up to a Braille reader to communicate with others. At school, she gained access to the materials she needed to be able to learn. When Girma was 15 years old and despite her blindness and deafness, she got the opportunity to travel to the West African nation of Mali to do volunteer work, helping to build schools with BuildOn, an Oakland nonprofit organization which ran youth service afterschool programs. Girma was educated in the Oakland Public Schools where she benefited from the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, a civil rights law that outlawed discrimination based on disability.
Girma made the decision to become an advocate for disability rights when she was attending Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, where she was forced to eat whatever food was on her plate. It made her realize she should have choices like everyone else. By advocating for herself, she was helping other students get the access they needed. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and anthropology at Lewis & Clark College in 2010. She also received a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree at Harvard Law School in 2013.
Career
Haben Girma is a disability rights lawyer. She travels around the world teaching the benefits of choosing inclusion. Her work has been featured in the Financial Times, BBC, Washington Post, NPR, and more. Haben now works as an independent consultant, public speaker, and author.
In 2013, Girma joined Disability Rights Advocates (DRA) in Berkeley, California where she specifically performed legal work for people with disabilities. She also worked with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and in 2014 she represented Heidi Viens, a blind Vermont mother in a lawsuit against Scribd, a digital library that provides e-book and auto-book subscription services for the blind. Scribd allegedly failed to give blind readers access to online services, a clear violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. A settlement was reached in which Scribd agreed to change its practices.
Girma was appointed to the national board of trustees for the Helen Keller Service for the Blind in January 2015. Later that year, she attended the White House ceremony sponsored by President Barack Obama to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In April 2016, Girma left Disability Rights Advocates to take up non-litigation advocacy full-time. Here she was involved in education-based programs that provided accessibility training, civil rights workshops, and diversity consulting to organizations that worked with the disabled. That same year, Girma gave a speech on accessible design at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose. She called on developers to remember those with disabilities when they designed the next generation of computers and software.
In August 2019 she publishes her first book, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law.
Views
Haben believes disability is an opportunity for innovation. She credits her Lewis & Clark degree and the support of the college’s academic community, particularly the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, with inspiring her to pursue her path in advocacy.
Quotations:
"Many cultures, including Ethiopian culture, view disability as a curse on the family. Advocates around the world are working to change such attitudes, and I help as best I can."
"People with disabilities succeed not by magic but from the opportunities afforded by America and the hard-won power of the ADA."
"Ultimately, my message is that people living with disabilities want to participate in the mainstream. We should move toward a more inclusive world, one in which it’s no longer a big deal for a deaf-blind person to go to law school - or achieve any dream."
"I see my disabilities as an opportunity to innovate. The disability is never the problem; the problem is in the environment."
"Anyone can become disabled at any time."
"A lot of people with disabilities are tired of the word ‘inspirational.’ Some even take offense."
"I teach people to see disability as an asset that can contribute to their organization. I want people to see the story of disability driving innovation, inspiring new technologies, bringing people together and connecting everyone - not just being ‘inspirational’."
"Having a disability means you're constantly dealing with obstacles, and a lifetime of constantly dealing with obstacles has allowed me to have really strong problem-solving skills, which is great as a lawyer."
Personality
Haben Girma would prefer not to be called “inspiring.”
She is an avid rock climber, salsa dancer, and surfer.
Quotes from others about the person
"I wish to take this opportunity, as well, to recognize you for your lifelong advocacy for people with disabilities, especially for the deaf-blind community. As a teacher and Prime Minister, I am particularly grateful for your work to ensure that students with disabilities have access to the tools they need to thrive at school and beyond. When our society is inclusive, we are all better off." – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
"She got out of Harvard, and you know what she’s doing? She is an advocate for opportunities for people with disabilities. Because in fact they have enormous ability, and all over the world that ability is going untapped, diminishing their lives and the rest of ours as well. So let’s give her a big round!" - Bill Clinton