Biography
Susan O'Hara has been a trustee of the True North Foundation for 13 years, responsible for the foundation' s grants to programs serving seniors and people with disabilities in the San Francisco Bay area, with emphasis on community-based independent living and quality of life.
Susan originated and now serves as a consulting historian and interviewer for a documentation project at the Bancroft to Library at the University of California at Berkeley. This project team documents the history of the disability movement through oral histories and collection of archival documents. The award-winning collection now totals 10,000 transcribed pages, most of it online, and serves as a research platform for scholars and historians. Prior to her current work, Susan was the director of the Disabled Students Program at the University of California, following thirteen years as a history teacher in high schools in Illinois and in Oakland CA. She has long been active in the disability community, including national and state associations on higher education and disabled students. Susan O'Hara holds a B.A. in history from Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, and in M.Ed in counseling from Loyola University in Chicago. She has an abiding interest in medieval French architecture and has published several articles on wheelchair accessibility in France. |
