Anita Shafer Aaron is Executive Director of the World Institute on Disability, an international disability policy development and training institute committed to economic and social inclusion of people with disabilities co-founded in 1983 by Ed Roberts, Judy Heumann and Joan Leon.
Prior to joining WID in 2010, Aaron served for twenty years as CEO of the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired headquartered in San Francisco focusing on local, regional, and national policy and program concerns impacting individuals who are blind, visually impaired and/or deaf-blind.
Aaron began her disability rights leadership career in 1981 as Deputy Director of the Berkeley Center for Independent Living and was one of WID’s pioneering staff members in 1983-86.
Aaron has a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s in public administration and certificates in facilitative mediation and nonprofit management.