Sydney “Syd” Pickern (she, they) excitedly joined the Lurie Institute in February 2023 as a Senior Research Associate to advance access to health, housing, and climate justice for multiply-marginalized disabled people across the country.
Syd is a disability rights attorney and advocate at heart, firmly believing in the power of community organizing, mutual aid, and fulfilling the promise of Olmstead. Their legal career fortuitously began with the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (DREDF) in the fall of 2016 as an Equal Justice Works Fellow, where they designed and implemented a two-year project committed to improving access to healthcare and health outcomes for disabled people of color in Alameda County. Syd continued her advocacy journey as a staff attorney with DREDF for three additional years, where she managed multiple large, state-funded housing grants and developed a passion and knowledge for expanding access to housing for unhoused disabled people and accessible disaster response. In this capacity, they worked on disability access in homeless shelters, emergency shelters, affordable, accessible housing, planned power outages, and wildfire events.
Syd joined the California Foundation for Independent Living Centers in the summer of 2021 as the Disability Disaster Manager of the statewide Disability Disaster Access and Resources program, a first of its kind emergency-response program utilizing a network of 19 Independent Living Centers across the state to assist the disability community before, during, and after disasters.
Syd has a significant physical disability and is a wheelchair user, committed to pushing healthcare and housing access and policies to new levels while centering the margins in these spaces.