Avenues SLS is proud to honor Barb Trader as part of our celebration of Women’s History Month. We salute Barb for her leadership and value her friendship and collaboration over the years. Barb continues her advocacy and leadership even in retirement, and she shares a bit of her story below.
Barb Trader is both an advocate for fairness and an outdoor enthusiast at heart. She retired with her husband, Mark Gregory, to Frederick, MD, in June of 2016, following a 40-year career in disability services and advocacy. Following a childhood in Wisconsin and with a stubborn faith in fairness, she pursued degrees in recreation therapy and vocational rehabilitation counseling. Barb has expertise in federal disability policy related to employment, education, healthcare, and disability rights. She most recently served as Executive Director of TASH, a national advocacy organization that advances the inclusion and human rights of people with significant disabilities.
We at Avenues SLS had the pleasure of working with Barb while she was the Executive Director of TASH, where she took the time to meet and get to know the people Avenues supports by sitting in on our conference presentations at both Cal-TASH and National TASH conferences. Barb asked Heather and Christopher from Avenues SLS to be keynote speakers at the 40th Anniversary TASH Conference in 2015, specifically because she wanted and needed their unique stories of success to help emphasize that meaningful, inclusive lives are possible for EVERYONE, regardless of the severity of one’s disability. Heather and Christopher were part of a panel that focused on the new Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) Rule, which dictated that federal funds no longer be used to support segregated, congregate services for people with disabilities; but that services needed to be integrated and provided in inclusive (typical) settings. The work we do on a local level at Avenues SLS helped to demonstrate that EVERYONE can have meaningful, inclusive lives; and Barb simultaneously worked tirelessly at the federal level to help ensure that this legislation was drafted and passed.
Prior to her work with TASH, Barb lived in Atlanta, Ga., where she developed a nationally recognized therapeutic recreation department at Shepherd Center, a National Model System of Care center in spinal cord injury rehabilitation, and served as its Director from 1978-1993. From 1981 to 1991, Barb served as the first director of a wheelchair division of a major road race and helped develop the sport of wheelchair road racing and its rules. In 1992, she led the successful effort to bring the Paralympic Games to the United States for the first time in history and was the Vice President of Youth and Community Programs, involving scores of youth programs, young people, and disability rights leaders from throughout the world in the overall Paralympic Games celebration. She launched multiple national programs and served on the national leadership staff of VSA arts and Easter Seals.
As a retiree, Barb’s interests are happily expanding to include gardening, travel, hiking, biking, environmental stewardship, local political engagement, and running. Barb is a board member of Envision Frederick County, Co-Chaired Frederick County’s and City’s joint Climate Emergency Mobilization Workgroup, and co-authored its report, mobilizefrederick.org. She co-chairs Mobilize Frederick and co-founded MACS, the Multifaith Alliance of Climate Stewards of Frederick County. She’s an enthusiastic resident of downtown Frederick and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick. She and her husband have four grown children in Maryland, California, and Washington.
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