A’ishah M.R. Hils is a young queer disabled femme originally from rural south Georgia. She works as a designer, writer, dancer, speaker, and consultant. She has a background in social justice work around disability, LGBT, youth, and interfaith issues.
A’ishah co-coordinated the Disability Justice track and Creating Collective Access and was an adviser for the Healing Justice track at the 2011 and 2012 Allied Media Conference in Detroit, MI. She co-facilitated a workshop on disability & Islam at the LGBT Muslim Retreat in May 2011 and is facilitating workshops on disability justice and accessibility/inclusion at the Cosmic Beauty School and Plymouth Congregational Church in Lawrence, KS, in Winter 2011/Spring 2012.
She represented NYLN and the state of Virginia at ADD’s 2011 Allies in Self-Advocacy Summit in Columbus, OH, which dealt with self-advocacy for people with developmental disabilities. She is currently serving on SAMHSA‘s Wellness Cultural Competence and Inclusion Subcommittee.
For eight years she has worked with a number of non-profit organizations and small businesses as a designer and consultant. She currently works with the National Youth Leadership Network, an organization run by and for youth with disabilities, where she serves on the Governing Board as Education & Media Committee chair. She is also working with the Virginia Organization of Consumers Asserting Leadership (VOCAL) to launch their Youth Create Wholeness outreach project to youth with mental health disabilities. She volunteers at Ad Astra Acupuncture in Lawrence, KS, and is a member of the People’s Organization of Community Acupuncture.
Through her work with LGBTQ and polyamory organizations, A’ishah has spoken on numerous panels about queer & alternative relationships and sexuality. She speaks and writes from her own experiences as a queer pansexual femme in long-term polyamorous relationships, and about her experience of being a queer person of faith.
A’ishah got her B.A. in Religion and Women’s Studies in 2009 from Florida State University, and did graduate work in Tibetan Studies at the University of Virginia from 2009-2010. In 2011 she settled (hopefully permanently!) in Lawrence, KS. She blogs at Disability Right Now, Plymouth, and VOCAL Youth Create Wholeness. She likes to drink coffee, read, cook, and knit, and enjoys performing lyrical dance and spoken word poetry.
